Donna Seaman
*Starred Review* The houses are ramshackle, the trucks hard-used, the weather extreme. The men, clad in shabby camouflage, are battered and scarred. They labor at dangerous, soul-killing jobs; hunt; drink too much; and stand by their loved ones no matter how flat-out crazy they are (or they think about killing them). Ditto for the women. Money is tight; the old ways and the precious wildlife are disappearing; loneliness is a plague; and the meth-cookers keep burning down the house. Welcome to rural Michigan, Campbell’s home ground, and a story collection of rare impact. These fine-tuned stories are shaped by stealthy wit, stunning turns of events, and breathtaking insights. Terrible injuries, accidental and otherwise, leave people and animals in misery, but they are salvaged, maybe even healed. Against all odds, salvation counterbalances loss and despair in unexpected ways in this small place of big feelings, where everyone is yoked together for better and worse, and where, as one persistent survivor observes, “what looked like junk to most people could be worth real money.” Campbell’s busted-broke, damaged, and discarded people are rich in longing, valor, forgiveness, and love, and readers themselves will feel salvaged and transformed by this gutsy book’s fierce compassion.
— Booklist
Small Press Review
"‘Beware ye who enter here,’ and yet you should and must because the work is so fine and truthful and deeply human, And you will surely know yourself and your world better for having come."
|Los Angeles Times
"Campbell’s an American voice—two parts healthy fear, one part awe, one part irony, one part realism."
Booklist
"Starred Review. These fine-tuned stories are shaped by stealthy wit, stunning turns of events, and breath-taking insights. Campbell’s busted-broke, damaged, and discarded people are rich in longing, valor, forgiveness and love, and readers themselves will feel salvaged and transformed by the gutsy book’s fierce compassion."
Laura Kasischke
"A strong collection. The pieces are rich in original detail, and highly atmospheric, while maintaining a satisfying sense of familiar territory, local voices."
Chicago Tribune
"In these stories about cold, lonely, meth-drenched, working-class Michigan life, there’s a certain beauty reaching something like the sublimity of a D. H. Lawrence story."
Jack Driscoll
"At their best these stories reflect what Robert Lowell refers to as ‘the grace of accuracy,’ which might simply be a way of saying that the voice overall convinces at every turn. By voice I mean personality, and these quirky, surprising, sometimes arcane and visceral and big-hearted stories resonate in ways that keep me nodding. . . . I love the risk of each story and how, in the midst of hilarity, a much more serious concern unfolds so that I’d find myself both laughing out loud and squeezing my heart dry simultaneously."
Chicago Literary Scene Examiner
"The effect of American Salvage is that Campbell’s Michigan lingers and cannot be ignored or forgotten."
Rachael Perry
"American Salvage is not a book for the cowardly. These daring stories, these desperate characters, would just as soon steal your wallet, break your heart or punch you in the gut than openly admit that redemption is possible during these dark times. But it is just this improbable hope that makes her work brilliant. This is Bonnie Jo Campbell at her bravest and best."
Literary Hub - Donna Baer Stein
Literary Hub's "The Best Short Stories from the Heart of the Country" in Martin's book, methamphetamine is an ominous presence in these seemingly innocent lands. American Salvage, a finalist for the National Book Award, opens with "The Trespasser." A father, mother, and teenage daughter enter their vacation cabin to find a burnt-out stove and destroyed kitchen where three men and a teenage girl have cooked meth. The two girls portrayed in this story have lived wildly different lives—one protected by an intact family, gymnastics trophies, and swim lessons; the other a runaway who trades her body for drugs. Campbell does a masterful job with the ending of the tale, bringing the dangers that sex and the outer world hold into the vulnerable naiveté of a Midwestern family.
Lansing Online News
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell is a gritty, heart-wrenching collection of short stories that examines an America our leaders don't want us to see. You will want to turn your head as her stories unfold, but you know you will peek." Campbell reminds us that life isn't always pretty for our neighbors, friends, and relatives. These stories will bore deeply into your psyche, but they also speak of redemption and hope for us all.
Third Coast
While each story stands well alone, as a whole they create an original and irreplaceable portrait of a struggling class of Americans. Her observations are relentlessly honest-no one is spared. But Campbell is a writer who feels deeply for even her most flawed characters, and this is ultimately what makes each of them impossible to forget."
Pleiades Press
Bonnie Jo Campbell's short story collection American Salvage is a beer-soaked, debt-filled, unflinching portrayal of the struggles of blue collar America. . . Her ability to reveal characters' flaws with such ease is a testament not only to her writing, but to her ability to probe well beneath the surface, exploring American troubles-drug addiction, poverty-as if intimately acquainted with them. . . . Campbell's stark, unapologetic glimpses of modest men lost in the modern world offer a heart-wrenching but necessary critique of an often overlooked people.
National Book Award Judges' Citation
In American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell picks through the ravages of a small-town America gutted by shifting demographics, new technology, and methamphetamine. Eschewing nostalgia or bitterness, she leads with her curiosity, using canny observation and sensuous prose to coax the reader into dark, strange, primordial territory.
author of The School on Hearts Content Road - Carolyn Chute
Most authors imitate life, while only a few create life. Bonnie Jo Campbell creates 'em then lets her create-lings live according to their own wills."
The Daily Beast
One reads feeling as if we, like the characters peopling a post-industrial land, are on the edge-a way of life ended, or begun; the ground quaking beneath our feet.
