Jane Fields has idolized her older brother, John, since they were children. She follows in his footsteps as a drummer, and when he suffers a psychotic break as a young man, she follows him into the bewildering landscape of mental illness. Surrendering to John’s schizophrenic and elliptical logic, Jane assumes her older brother’s identity, and begins to make a life for herself as a young man named John. Every day, Jane interacts with the world as John, and then comes home to tell her brother the stories of his own life, under the naïve and perhaps mad hope that these stories will help John remember and return to the self he lost. But in the act of being John, Jane runs the risk of becoming him. Jane soon identifies more strongly with the man she’s become than the overshadowed woman she once was. When John begins to demand that Jane give up certain aspects of the life she’s built under her assumed identity, particularly a romance, Jane’s double life becomes a house of cards that threatens to collapse. Jane and John are forced to confront the limits of their ability to control each other, and the world around them, through the stories they tellbut just how deep into mental illness can Jane slide?

My Brother's Name: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Krughoff, Laura

United States

Mighty Media Press

Six stories span a century of rural American women. Marriages occur in the 1930s for lack of other opportunities; a young girl dances to Thriller for her friend’s older brother; a pastor remembers her childhood spent fantasizing that she is the prophet John the Baptist. In the small towns of the Midwest, girls and women dream of finding voice and forcing the world to listen.

Wake in the Night

Short Stories & Anthologies

Arc Pair Press

Six stories span a century of rural American women. Marriages occur in the 1930s for lack of other opportunities; a young girl dances to Thriller for her friend’s older brother; a pastor remembers her childhood spent fantasizing that she is the prophet John the Baptist. In the small towns of the Midwest, girls and women dream of finding voice and forcing the world to listen. “Spanning the last century with narrators aged 10 to 100, these stories reveal women struggling to fit a definition of womanhood that cannot contain them. By employing forms that break with convention in the same spirited ways her characters do, Laura Krughoff creates a world of stunning detail that examines just what people will do when expectations stifle truth. In Wake in the Night, we are reminded why we must push beyond easy categories and find new ways of understanding the roles we play.” ~ Paula Carter, author of No Relation “Laura Kroghoff’s stories have the lyrical exuberance of a Grace Paley in their bones.” ~ Christopher Grimes, author of The Pornographers and Public Works: Short Fiction and a Novella “In these beautifully written and disarmingly humane stories, Laura Krughoff points out the problems with our preconceived notions, and then imagines what new notions we might generate in their place so she can undermine those, too. Reading Krughoff is like having the nicest person in the world tell you there’s no Tooth Fairy, but that, even if there were, said creature wouldn’t act at all the way you’d think it would.” ~ Andrew Farkas, author of Sunsphere and Self-Titled Debut "Wake in the Night is flooded with life, and one gets the sense that Krughoff is a careful study of character and what forms a person’s identity. That curiosity and care with which Krughoff approaches her characters are deeply felt in her writing, making this an unforgettable collection." ~ Emily Webber, jmww

Essays & Correspondence

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Books by Krughoff, Laura

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Krughoff, Laura. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

My Brother's Name: A Novel

Wake in the Night

Wake in the Night