Here Is How It Happens

Fiction. Inertia is a force, a powerful force, but it's not the only one. Courtney and Martin know all the words to all the songs on the mix tape of their lives. They have the cynical in-jokes down, the snide asides, the nonchalant pose. But beneath the practiced façade of self-satisfying ennui, these kids are staring down their futures, struggling in soured relationships with lovers and families, and finding out just what it takes to break out, if it's even possible. HERE IS HOW IT HAPPENS."Spencer Dew writes like a quiet maniac who sees the violence under the fa‡ade of everyday things, and the beauty under the violence. With X-ray vision and fine-tuned prose, Dew discovers insights and absurdities in the Americana of box stores, elite colleges, poetry students, buffet restaurants, historic plaques, alternative radio, conspiracy theorists, installation artists, and lug-headed drug experimentalists. HERE IS HOW IT HAPPENS explores the place where the heartland meets the rust belt meets the precarious bubble of academia, and finds redemption in the purity of longing and the shit coffee of an Amish country diner."—Karen Lillis