Nine Miles: And Other Stories

Twenty stories from the western edge of Nebraska. A boy in the way back of a Ford Ranch Wagon, watching the sandhills move through the rear window and seeing things in the hills that aren't there. A man keeping the lawn lines straight because his father is watching. A drawer with $340 in it and a year left. A clinic in Curtis that closed on a Tuesday. A woman doing arithmetic in her head in a checkout line, deciding what she can put back. Three generations in the same yard in the same June light, the grass falling away in rows. Some of these pieces are true. Some are invented. A few are harder to classify than that. All of them are about the people this country doesn't stop for. The ones who don't perform well on camera. The ones whose names don't trend. The ones sitting at kitchen tables before sunrise, counting what's left, waiting for the world to make sense, or for it to at least leave them alone for a while. Nine Miles is Tom Joad's first book. He writes from Scottsbluff, Nebraska.