Luke Rolfes’ Sleep Lake is a kaleidoscopic, meticulously plotted novel that brings compassion, complexity, and nuance to its varied and captivating characters. At the center of this mosaic are Janie and Thomas, a young, married couple with a toddler, whose desires, frustrations, fears, and secrets are bringing them, closer and closer, to a high-stakes reckoning. Around them spins a cast of memorable characters – an incarcerated brother, an untethered sister, an accidental drug mule, pot-smoking retirees, and most-disturbingly, a sexual predator who haunts and lurks just outside the frame. Sleep Lakeillustrates, honestly and unflinchingly, the love and loyalty that binds family and friends, as well as the yearnings, complacency, and willful blindness that can put those bonds at risk. Rolfes’ novel is a wonder; at once a beautifully arranged, urgent, page-turner of a story, and, at the same time, an introspective, generous exploration of flawed, but always mesmerizing characters.
—Joanna Luloff, author of Remind Me Again What Happened
—Joanna Luloff, author of Remind Me Again What Happened
Impossible Naked Life
This collection of mostly very short stories will take the reader to common settings with everyday folks but the perspective and social interaction between characters comes from a unique and often quite strange perspective. Impossible Naked Life will take you on a bizarre journey that you won't soon forget.
"The energy coursing through Impossible Naked Life is barely contained by the page. Mostly told in quick bursts, these stories pack more sharp images and lines of deep beauty and intensity in four pages than most authors can fit in twenty. Some of the stories are abstract and surreal and others feature small "normal" moments told with such precision that the real world somehow becomes even stranger. The people in these stories will stay with you, and I get a feeling I couldn't shake them loose even if I tried."
- Richard Z. Santos (Judge, 2021 Acacia Fiction Prize)
Flyover Country
The stories in Flyover Country examine the crushing truths and strange consolations of Middle America, offering gripping visions of the struggle for identity, dignity, and sometimes life itself. In "Three Months," a young man leans on his older brother before he surrenders himself for jail time he believes will ruin his life. In "Cold Town," we crash headlong through the forest with a new dad who has a killer snapping at his heels, and in "Snow Geese," we see the collision between a teenager's broken family and his girlfriend's dark secret.