{"product_id":"superior-stories-9781950744268","title":"Superior Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn her linked story collection, Superior Stories, Helen Raica-Klotz takes readers \u003cstrong\u003edeep into the physical and emotional lives of regular people\u003c\/strong\u003e trying and often failing to do the right thing-for themselves, their families, their friends, their northern Michigan worlds. Raica-Klotz conjures evocative settings and richly layered up-north characters with language that is at once concrete and elegiac, painting a hard yet enchanting landscape of tarpaper roofs, black ice, and hoar frost-a travelogue of human hope and grief, aspiration and desperation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eSuperior Stories\u003c\/em\u003e explores a sociological frontie\u003c\/strong\u003er-Michigan's upper peninsula, where human drama is always pressurized by the biggest, most alluring, and most dangerous of all the Great Lakes. Here, Helen Raica-Klotz shows tender, annoying, careless, and hopeful Yoopers grappling with their own decisions and with conditions forced upon them. In each case, \u003cstrong\u003ethe characters are real, their struggles fully dramatized, and their situations hard to forget. \u003c\/strong\u003eThere's also some aesthetic risk. Each title begins with a crisp informational passage that gives way to finely crafted and intimate storytelling.\u003cstrong\u003e In marrying reportage and narration, Raica-Klotz makes two distinct writerly forms feel harmonious, even natural in their union\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRaica-Klotz, Helen:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \"Helen Raica-Klotz has a Masters in English from Central Michigan University, and she teaches composition courses at Saginaw Valley State University. She's also taught writing at a regional prison, a homeless shelter, an alternative high school, and other places where she can find people with stories to tell. Helen lives in northern Michigan with her husband, Steve, and their large black lab, Atticus. Here, she spends much of her time walking through the woods - and avoiding grading papers and cooking.\"","brand":"Michigan Writers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51415233265938,"sku":"9781950744268","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_99139bf3-8ad1-4433-a6fd-6d673608efc7.jpg?v=1751131258","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/superior-stories-9781950744268","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}