Hello! from the Flyover States: Four Short Stories Set in the American Midwest

Abstract

The middle of the United States must seem dull to most of the rest of the country. Here you will find no ocean and no mountains. The most populous U.S. city is not located here. We are not surfers. We are not Wall Street bankers. We are not the good- looking people that belong in Hollywood movies. Instead, here you will find a slower pace of life, an emphasis on agriculture, and fields and fields of corn – the stuff of Wendell Berry novels. Included are several stories that hope to capture a subterranean magic that is still grown here in the middle of the country. From the sudden appearance of a forest of sloths in downtown Indianapolis, to the secret backroom of the Tractor Supply Company – these are distinctly midwestern stories. These are stories of underdogs, the overlooked, the kind and downtrodden, the holdovers of the Protestant Work Ethic. At the center of it all, readers will find a joyousness of those who have not given up hope for a more humane humanity.