An undertaker lobbies to bury a convicted murderer in a Kansas public cemetery. In the Black Hills, a lawyer prods her Native American grandmother for clues about a family death. An injured dancer waits to hear whether her cousin has survived a dangerous trip out on the lake. Trusting in his estranged daughter, an Oklahoma father attempts to save his farm. A cancer patient revisits her grandfather’s struggle to preserve Ozark wildlife. In Beulah Land’s thirteen stories, lush country settings are juxtaposed against taut urban landscapes. Every character speaks out with their own unique, inimitable and intimate voice. Between New York City and Key West, between the Dakotas and Oklahoma, Krista McGruder’s prose creates a literate, disparate landscape of people both wandering and entrenched. In Beulah Land, geographic and emotional desolation are always present—and surmountable.
About the Author
 KRISTA McGRUDER was raised in Neosho, Missouri. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale, winning the Katherine K. Walker essay prize. Her fiction has appeared in The North American Review and The Best of Carve Magazine and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She attends The New School University's fiction MFA program. McGruder lives in New York City.
"Krista McGruder invests her stories with incredibly rich situations and complex, extraordinary characters."
- Ken Foster, author of The Kind I'm Likely To Get
"Film-makers should flock to this collection...many of these stories have a compulsive narrative and a consistently vivid imagery that make them natural contenders for movie adaptation." - David Jones, Director of 84 Charing Cross Road
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The Critics Praise:
"Besides being a hell of a good read - you¡¦ll want to stick with this book all the way - Beulah Land is a mine of information on various corners of American life. We need this information and we¡¦re doubly blessed when it arrives in a packet of prose so polished, so assured, we want to hear more from Krista McGruder - soon and often."
-Frank McCourt, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes
"McGruder's collection of literary short stories may be among the best I have ever read. The author's way with words is of a high quality rarely seen in today's writers. Each story is excellent."
-Deal Safrit, Literary Book Post, Salisbury, NC
"Beulah Land clearly documents Krista McGruder as a major literary talent."
Midwest Book Review
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