The Mutual UFO Network by Lee Martin
In The Mutual UFO Network, Pulitzer Prize finalist and master of the craft Lee Martin presents his first short story collection since his acclaimed debut The Least You Need to Know. With Martin's signature insight, each story peers into the nooks and crannies of seemingly normal homes, communities, and families. The footprints of a midnight prowler peel back the veneer of a marriage soured by a long-ago affair. A con man selling faked UFO footage loses his wife to the promise of life outside the ordinary. And a troubled man, tormented by his own mind, lies in the street to look at the stars, and in doing so unravels the carefully constructed boundaries between his quiet neighbors.
From friendship and family to all forms of love, The Mutual UFO Network explores the intricacies of relationships and the possibility for redemption in even the most complex misfits and loners.
Publication Date: June 12, 2018
Hardcover: 300 pages
ISBN: 978-1-945814-49-5
Also available as an eBook
PRAISE FOR THE MUTUAL UFO NETWORK
"A superb story collection that brims with tragedy and compassion." -Shelf Awareness starred review
"Martin cleverly exposes the fractures between husbands and wives, family and friends, in these twelve excellent stories of people lying to themselves because the truth is too painful to admit...a vivid, emotionally precise collection." -Publishers Weekly
"With no irony or judgment, Martin peers into the lives of ordinary families and communities, and shines a light on the secrets that we all keep too deep in our hearts to ever speak them...a solid and satisfying short-story collection that pays homage to all facets and stages of life, the light and the dark, the bitter and the sweet." -The Coil
"Quiet traumas and long-festering emotional wounds abound in this collection...With precise storytelling, Martin chronicles the unrest in his characters' lives and the shocking moments when tensions reach their breaking points." -Kirkus Reviews
"We know these characters, distant literary cousins of the lonely men and women brought to life by Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, and Richard Ford. ... Martin's in full control of both the rhythm and blues in each story. He is the craftsman, the master architect, and those skills and Martin's adherence to his primary mission - to tell a story worth telling - are what make this collection so thrilling." -PopMatters
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Martin is the author of the novels Late One Night (Dzanc, 2015); The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; and Break the Skin. He has also published three memoirs, From Our House, Turning Bones, and Such a Life. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need to Know. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he is a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and a past winner of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.
