{"product_id":"without-saints-9781625571427","title":"Without Saints","description":"\u003cp\u003eWITHOUT SAINTS is a breathtaking journey to rediscover hope between the ruins: Poet Christopher Locke was baptized by Pentecostals, absolved by punk rock, and nearly consumed by narcotics. Like Denis Johnson's propulsive Jesus' Son, Without Saints is a brief, muscular ride into the heart of American desolation, and the love one finds waiting for them instead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"This slim volume of essays packs a dense punch, propelled, like a carnival ride, through Locke's Pentecostal upbringing to his years as a drug-experimenting teen punk, to his teaching career, family, and intermittent struggles with substance abuse. Every scene is taut, like a highwire, the only steady presence Locke's lyrical, quiet prose. Locke knows how to make the ordinary feel fantastical and the fantastical ordinary.\" -Jen Michalski, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Tide King\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Summer She Was Under Water\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Haunting and understated, Christopher Locke chronicles the secrets that bedevil every extended family.\" -David L . Marcus, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of \u003cem\u003eWhat it Takes to Pull Me Through\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Christopher Locke's WITHOUT SAINTS is an intimate and lyrical book of essays that begins with vivid and wondrous memories of childhood, into early adulthood's ambivalence around a worrying drug use, into the intimacies of being a husband and a father. And finally, into two of the book's knockouts: a beautiful remembrance of the poet and writer, Donald Hall, and a probing look at what it's like to teach a creative writing workshop inside the walls of a federal prison. Locke's writing is up close and personal and brave-always revealing, always acknowledging the tenderness and melancholy of living out loud.\" -Michael Klein, author of \u003cem\u003eTrack Conditions\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Black Lawrence Press, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50401533952274,"sku":"9781625571427","price":23.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_91d32954-ed5b-420e-b4b9-513f8d1b299b.jpg?v=1729138725","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/without-saints-9781625571427","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}