GASPING FOR AIR STORIES OF ADULTS AND CHILDREN by Katherine Trace Brueck

$23.99

 

Of the many thousands of books published every year, few can truly be called “unique.” But Katherine Trace Brueck’s Gasping for Air: Stories of Adults and Children is a book like no other. In terms of genre, this collection has no fixed address. It contains short stories, poems, poems-within-stories, and stories-within-poems. There are narratives with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends, and there are also fragments and vignettes. There are sly homages to literary sources ranging from the Bible and classical myth to Lolita and The Catcher in the Rye, all rendered with virtuosic skill in a dizzying array of styles. But Gasping for Air is not just a grab bag, for the book coheres around a dark sensibility and a profound compassion for children damaged by the neglect and abuse of the adults who should protect them. Unsettling and unforgettable, Brueck’s collection is a stark reminder of the precariousness of childhood innocence.

–Michael Fleming, author of Bags and Tools: Poems

 

The writings of Katherine Brueck are ones that draw you into a world that is both innocent and painful. She touches upon the subjects that few of us dare to approach. Her stories are beautifully crafted and do what good literature does: pierce us to the core.

–Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Fletcher Jones Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary’s University, Los Angeles

 

 

 

 

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Description

GASPING FOR AIR STORIES OF ADULTS AND CHILDREN

by Katherine Trace Brueck

Full-length, paper

$23.99  

979-8-88838-422-0

2023

Funded in part by the One Last Word Program.

Gasping for Air: Stories of Adults and Children portrays a dark sensibility and profound compassion for children scarred by the neglect and abuse of adults meant to protect them. Unsettling and unforgettable, the collection is a stark reminder of the precariousness of childhood innocence.  Through short stories, poems, poems-within-stories, and stories-within-poems, the book paints a troubling vision, at times starkly real and at others vividly dreamlike, of the complex relationship between adults and children.

Dr. Katherine taught for over 35 years at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles, where she served as Professor and English Department Chair.  A talented poet, she published a poetry collection Voiceless Love, Finishing Line Press, 2016, and published sonnets in a variety of literary journals, including Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, and Troubadour.  She also authored the scholarly work The Redemption of Tragedy, The Literary Vision of Simone Weil, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1995, that developed a theory of Christian tragedy.  With her passing in October of 2020, she is survived by her husband Don, her daughters, Heidi and Emily, and her granddaughters, Chloe and Violet.

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