“Sheldon Birnie’s short stories are pure Canadian mythology. A modern constellation of heroic day drinking dads, Sasquatch hunters, and ice curling champions. Recommended for readers in the finest denim tuxedos or even regular tuxedos."
—Jon Lindsey, author of Body High
ISBN: 9798987465462
166 pages
$17
Available from Malarkey Books, as well as Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes and Noble, Asterism, and most book retailers.
“Where the Pavement Turns to Sand is a collection of working class, everyday heartbreaks and bad decisions. In a refreshing rural Canadian setting, the characters in these slice of life tales stumble through divorce, debt, bad sex, and boring jobs, but also curling robots, aliens, jackalopes, wendigo, lots of legs wet with urine, and (maybe) sasquatches with an unexpected whimsy. What makes it work is Birnie’s signature dark humor and conversational style that makes every story feel like it was your neighbor telling it to you over a beer around a campfire, or at the rink. Surprising, entertaining, grimy and weird.”
–Meagan Lucas, author of Songbirds and Stray Dogs and Here in the Dark, Editor in Chief of Reckon Review.
"The stories in Where the Pavement Turns to Sand are reminiscent of the writers who made me want to take this shit seriously: Willy Vlautin, Donald Ray Pollock, Padgett Powell. Look, all I'm saying is, Sheldon Birnie. Sheldon goddamn Birnie, man."
—D.T. Robbins, author of Birds Aren’t Real
“This collection of interlocking, grittily lyrical short stories invites readers out past the glare of polite society to the edges of an ever-encroaching darkness. Birnie’s Lake Manawaka is encircled by small town landscapes and characters that will not be unfamiliar to fans of Margaret Laurence. But story by story, Where the Pavement Turns to Sand tips us over into an eerier world, where the everyday struggles of prairie life and Black Mirror weirdness meet. Birnie turns the screw so that we are fairly certain we’ve gone beyond metaphors for economic depression into certified monster country. Birnie’s stories explore the grief, humor, and terror of human lives made both tiny and tragic within the vast wildernesses of time and space.”
—Anne Stewart, author of Angry Planet: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World
“Where the Pavement Turns to Sand gives us characters living lives of quiet desperation in a place where impossible things – lake monsters, wendigo, unbeatable curling robots, and more – just might be lurking in the shadows. Lake Manawaka is like a Winesburg, Ohio where everything is possible and nothing is real, a place where Birnie seamlessly blends low-key science fiction and horror elements with gritty, working class realism. It’s a stunning collection, one of the most memorable I’ve read in quite some time.”
—Joey R. Poole, author of I Have Always Been Here Before
