To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Call it Absurdist Realism. Call it Midwestern Gothic. Call it a book of stories that get a hold of your head and heart. Whatever you call it </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> takes us to the edge of lived experience and guides us to look back in wonder at essential elements of humanness: hope grief confusion joy. While the worlds and characters in each of these stories arrive fresh and distinct---A woman drives through Central Illinois returning lost baggage to airline passengers accompanied by her mother's toothless mini-poodle; a couple finds their lives weighed with 3D printings of their baby's fetus after a miscarriage; a rag-tag group spends every day together in an abandoned and repurposed pharmacy the shelves still filled with out-dated stock while they up-skill for promised minimum-wage jobs---we grab hold of a throughline: the book spills over with people building and breaking idols to find love and survival where they can. And we cheer them on at each step.</span></p>