Wake in the Night

"Laura Kroghoff's stories have the lyrical exuberance of a Grace Paley in their bones." Christopher Grimes, author of The Pornographers and Public Works: Short Fiction and a Novella

Six stories span a century of rural American women. Marriages occur in the 1930s for lack of other opportunities; a young girl dances to Thriller for her friend's older brother; a pastor remembers her childhood spent fantasizing that she is the prophet John the Baptist. In the small towns of the Midwest, girls and women dream of finding voice and forcing the world to listen.

"Spanning the last century with narrators aged 10 to 100, these stories reveal women struggling to fit a definition of womanhood that cannot contain them. By employing forms that break with convention in the same spirited ways her characters do, Laura Krughoff creates a world of stunning detail that examines just what people will do when expectations stifle truth. In Wake in the Night, we are reminded why we must push beyond easy categories and find new ways of understanding the roles we play." Paula Carter, author of No Relation