Nebraska: A Novel

by Stacy Sims

Stacy Sims is the author of SWIMMING NAKED, published by Viking in 2004. The Chicago Tribune called it "brutally moving...Sims works toward a stunningly beautiful climax while bringing painful pictures into excruciating focus." The same could be said for this new novel. Nebraska is a vast and empty place. Nebraska is a state of mind. Nebraska is the one place in the country that allows people to legally abandon their children in an emergency room to become wards of the state. Lorabee has reached the end of her rope. A motherless child, she has found herself lacking the skills to mother her own. The daughter of an alcoholic father, she finds herself married to an alcoholic gambler, who has abandoned her and the children and left them homeless and crushed by debts they cannot pay. Her children are dangerously angry, self-destructive and out of her reach. She has no hope. Abandoned herself, abandonment is her only strategy. Nebraska is all she can think of. The family's road trip from Ohio is an exquisite examination of ruin, of glimmering hope and of subtle transformation. When you reach the end of your rope, you may find there's still some rope left. Nebraska is vindication. Nebraska is triumph. Nebraska is a luminous, disturbing, wrenching, intensely satisfying novel.

221 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 2, 2011