Spell Heaven

"A seamlessly written book full of beautiful connections." —Kirkus Reviews

"I would like to wrap myself inside of Toni Mirosevich's words, so that their warmth, vitality, and haunting insights into our humanity will somehow absorb into my thoughts and skin, and I will become a better person. The characters in these unforgettable stories are clever, at times peculiar, but always full of heart. Their experiences stay with you long after you close this book. This is a beautiful collection." —Aimee Phan, author of We Should Never Meet and *The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

"To read *Spell Heaven is to be swept away to the sea, and fish and neighbors, and a small town on the California coast; to be swept away along through associations and stunning imagery; to be pulled in close by the intimate voice of a good friend who knows how to swear and spool shimmering reams of language." —Nina Schuyler, author of the award-winning novel *The Translator

"Deeply evocative, Toni Mirosevich’s *Spell Heaven is a compelling collection whose narrator ponders memory, time, and lost worlds. With lyrical insight, she explores the mystery and the margins, the people and places, of the hardscrabble seaside town where she and her wife have made home. A gem." —Vanessa Hua, Forbidden City

• "I love these stories—the delicious humor, the unvarnished exchanges, the characters in all of their wonderful, painful complexity, and Toni's gift for finding meaning in the most ordinary moments of a life. *Spell Heaven triumphs again and again." —Patricia Powell, author of The Fullness of Everything and Me Dying Trial

Auteur

Toni Mirosevich

Texte du rabat

"Incisive linked stories about a lesbian couple moving from San Francisco to the Cannery Row, the heart of Steinbeck country, wonderful profiles of their new neighbors and the challenges of being strangers in a new place. A narrator, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, enjoys an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she unexpectedly finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world, "where the clothes are clean and the politics are dirty." With her wife, she moves to a down-in-the-heels seacoast town where she finds a community of outsiders; the marginal at the margins of the sea. The coastal un-elites. Instead of moving on up people move over on the bench and welcome her in. Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's downing when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex-FBI agent's surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a queer couple's move to a gay unfriendly neighborhood and their response to a local murder, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy and the story of Kite Man who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When they fly you can buy. A modern story of a community of outsiders--not unlike characters found in Steinbeck's Cannery Row--and the queer female narrator drawn to the sea and their world"--

Résumé
After moving to a coastal town a gay couple is drawn to a group of outsiders living on the edge of the sea

In Spell Heaven, a linked story collection, a lesbian couple moves to a coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders.

Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's drowning when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex–FBI agent’s surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy, and Kite Man, who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When the kites fly, you can buy.

The narrator of these stories, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, chooses an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world “where the clothes are clean but the politics are dirty.” She questions her own stereotypes about her neighbors and gradually begins to question her life path. Spell Heaven celebrates those who are looking for a human connection in an increasingly isolated world.