Summer of Government Cheese and Other Stories

I always warn folks that Summer of Government Cheese is not your basic easy-reading collection. Some of the stories experiment with form. People get raped. Women are murdered. Some people are gay. Some are not. Some are Native American. Some are liars. Some are old. Some are suffering betrayal at the hands of those they love. Some are migrant workers. Some are intellectually disabled. Some are crazy. Some are suffering post-traumatic stress. Some are suicidal. Some are Mexican people being enslaved by American corporations. It doesn’t bother me to hold up the dark mirror. We all have that side of us, and I happen to think it’s healthy to own up to it. As they say, one way to dispel darkness is to expose it to light.

— Paula Coomer

Paula Coomer’s fi ne work is characterized by a palpable sense of place as well as by a strong compassion for, indeed love for, her idiosyncratic characters. Summer of Government Cheese is rich with, tension, poignancy and surprise. Paula Coomer is a writer to watch out for.

— Valerie Miner, author of After Eden and Winter’s Edge

Paula Coomer’s stories are as sparkling and unexpected as found pennies, with their promise of pleasure in turning the next page.

— Mary Blew, author of All But the Waltz and Jackalope Dreams

What has charmed me for years about Paula Coomer’s stories evinces itself here in spades: her joyfully comic yet genuinely humane engagement with a fi ctive bus full of quirky and lovable characters; her meandering narratives that never lose their true course; and the drop-dead gorgeous lyricism that continually possesses her and transforms one’s sense of what language is and can do.

— Lance Olsen, author of Nietzsche’s Kisses and Anxious Pleasures