Every Kiss a War

by Leesa Cross-Smith

The twenty-seven stories in Leesa Cross-Smith’s debut short story collection Every Kiss a War are set to the sounds of "frogs and crickets out back, steam-pulsing like a machine" and "a sad country song that hasn’t been written yet." Men and women love and leave over cigarettes and shots of kitchen table whiskey. She takes us down Kentucky roads in the back of a pickup truck to both truculent and delicate women and rough, rambling men edged with gentleness. A finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award and the Iowa Short Fiction Award, this collection is a ravishing war of characters laid bare as they look for the glow and fight to stay in the light. As affecting as they are sexy and romantic, these stories burn with sweetness like firecrackers and honey as you throw them back and holler for another round.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

216 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2014

About the author

Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and writer from Kentucky. She is the author of seven books: AS YOU WISH, GOODBYE EARL, HALF-BLOWN ROSE, THIS CLOSE TO OKAY, SO WE CAN GLOW, WHISKEY & RIBBONS, EVERY KISS A WAR. HALF-BLOWN ROSE received Coups De Cœur recognition from the American Library in Paris and was the Amazon Editors’ Spotlight for June 2022, the inaugural pick for Amazon’s Editorial Director Sarah Gelman’s Book Club Sarah Selects, and the Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick for June 2022. THIS CLOSE TO OKAY was a Goodreads Choice 2021 Nominee for Best Fiction, a Book of the Month Book of the Year 2021 Nominee, a Book of the Month Early Release Pick for December 2020, the Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick for February 2021 and the Marie Claire Book Club Pick for March 2021. She was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize and SO WE CAN GLOW was listed as one of NPR's Best Books of 2020. WHISKEY & RIBBONS won the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Gold Medal in Literary Fiction, was longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was one of O Magazine's 2018 Top Books of Summer. EVERY KISS A WAR was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award (2014) and was a finalist for both the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (2012) and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2012). Find more @ LeesaCrossSmith.com

Reviews

[Leesa]

I WROTE THIS BOOK. Twenty-seven little stories about love & light & boys who listen to Neil Young & girls who listen to Liz Phair & Kentucky & whiskey & fireworks & fights & baseball & cowboys & complicated feelings & kitchen kisses. I THINK YOU'LL LIKE IT TOO. <3

[Michael Smith]

Admittedly, I'm biased-- Leesa Cross-Smith is one of my favorite fiction writers and since I'm the publisher of this sublime collection, I've not only read it many times over, I can share some wonderful comments by noted authors re: Every Kiss a War...

Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and everything else anyone is reading, tells us "Leesa Cross-Smith is a consummate storyteller who uses her formidable talents to tell the oft-overlooked stories ... creating crisp, evocative moments that will linger long after you've read this book's very last word."

Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life, says "Her writing is exquisite and fearless, exposed and bleeding onto the page. Every story without exception is smart, gentle, heartbreaking, and most importantly, real."

This collection of stories is that rare kind of American book meant for *everyone*, regardless of background, gender, religion, etc., etc. These are stories about what we share living in the world--and trying to make it through without losing who or what we love most.

You'll love this book. You'll tell others they will, too.

[Sara]

Here is a book of incomparable beauty: lush in language, born of soul, full of heart, rooted in all that matters, a living breathing thing.

[Steve Karas]

Every Kiss a War is a special book by an exceptionally talented writer. I don’t know anyone who writes quite like Leesa Cross-Smith. Her writing is mystical and sensual, her language wild and imaginative. These twenty-seven stories are raw and ferocious, each like a lit book of matches in your hand, about relationships and hope and hurt and love and love-making, with characters whose emotions are on full display, unrestrained. She gives us “Bible-black bruises” a heart that’s a “heavy, loaded gun he hands over to me, lets me spin on my finger” and a man whose “mouth tasted like thousand-age Russian novels.” These stories open wounds and then heal then, leave you wanting more.

[Kathy]

Read the stories Leesa Cross-Smith has made for us here and remember the cheap beer & the old songs & fireworks & cowboys & ‘ice clinky frontier whiskey’ & kisses that feel like tiny wars. Remember these things as if they happened to you because they did. Her writing is exquisite and fearless, exposed and bleeding onto the page. Every story without exception is smart, gentle, heartbreaking, and most importantly, real.

[Kevin]

I love Leesa's love for country music, romance, drinking, baseball, and being human. She writes beautifully of relationships and the ways lovers communicate or miscommunicate. These stories make me wish we lived in the same city, so we could go out for beers and talk about life. A great and insightful collection.

[Bud Smith]

Flat out phenomenal. Little stories that are in truth bigger than the moon, could crush the moon and sometimes do. Harvest moons. Blue moons. Moons over the farm. Moons over the lake. Aching. Beautiful. Make ya hurt stories, in my opinion, required reading for anyone who loves or wants to love.

[Alice Kaltman]

What can I say? Gritty, real, sad, funny, sexy. Cross-Smith is a master at making love stories out of small moments,with authentic voices ringing throughout this story collection/novella/wonder. BRAVO!

[Vern]

These stories were sweet, savory, and sprinkled with a delicacy only southern writers can give. They were real. They were genuine. They reminded me that love and like are both complicated. I didn't want any of them to end.

[Justine Knight]

I ended up reading this entire book in one day and I couldn't put it down, I even read it at work. Saw one of Smith's short stories in a literary magazine and decided to check it out. Very pleased I did.

[Ben]

Just about the sexiest thing I've ever read.

[Scott Daughtridge]

Relationship stories usually bore the shit out of me, but Leesa finds the rawest nerves in her characters and makes them sparkle. I loved every story.

[Joey Liu]

I read This Close to Okay by the same author and had to read this book of short stories.

Leesa Cross-Smith has a way with words, every chapter is so poetic, introspective and it makes you become fully invested in each character. There are so many chapters that I want her to write as novels...in particular, the juicy love triangle between Violet, Dominic and Roscoe in “A Modest Guide to Truculence/Survival: Girls,” “What the Fireworks Are For,” “Hold On, Hold On” and “Cheap Beer & Sparklers.”

My most favorite though is “Whisky & Ribbons” about a recently widowed woman, Evi, who’s husband is killed in the line of duty. She is also pregnant when he is killed. His best friend, Dalton ends up moving in with her and the baby to help out. And together they grieve and lean on each other for support. Luckily, she did write a novel on this one which I am going to read next!!

4.5/5

[Anuradha Goyal]

Another beautiful book by the author...am just loving her writing.

[Amanda Gale]

This book is powerful and inspirational. The emotions are so raw, and the language is so beautiful. Every line reads like poetry. I found myself reading more slowly than I normally would because I was stopping so often to let the words sink in.

These stories explore human frailty and also the simple joys of everyday life, and the bittersweet nature of it all. I could imagine the characters so clearly because I know them all. I think part of what makes these stories so powerful is that the author seems to understand that the little details of life--how someone smells, what someone keeps in his pocket, the way someone stands at the kitchen sink--often mean the most to us and stay with us. I love that I found those details in these stories.

Equally important is the fact that these stories are incredibly sexy. They celebrate the way we love each other with all of our senses, and every sense is represented.

I truly felt these stories and these characters. The author does a great job of opening them up and letting us in. We see their flaws, but we love them anyway--and we love them for their flaws, because their flaws are ours. Ultimately I think these stories are about the bittersweet beauty of love, with all its disappointments and triumphs. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is wonderful in every sense of the word.

[Robert]

I was fortunate enough to be asked to read and blurb an advanced copy of Leesa Cross-Smith's debut collection, and was blown away:

“Leesa Cross-Smith’s Every Kiss A War is an emotional battlefield, a perfectly written anatomy of the human condition—the good, the bad, the quiet moments that define our relationships—that you can’t help but pick yourself out in the pages, can’t help but be pulled into her sumptuous writing, her words becoming your favorite quilt to cover you from the cold.”

Cannot recommend EVERY KISS A WAR enough. Leesa has a unique voice, one all her own, and it’s exciting to see her get the attention she so deserves.

[Susan Rukeyser]

Leesa Cross-Smith’s tiny stories brim with love and light and sometimes loneliness. They are wise and kind. The language is just right. The author’s voice is assured yet playful. Her characters, sweet yet flawed. The world of her stories becomes a place we know well. It becomes a place we want to stay.

[Robert Vaughan]

This is a dazzling assortment of stories that range in depth, blistering and oozing emotional tension and lyrically rich prose. I was a fan of Cross-Smith's stories since the first time I ever read her work online. So glad this book exists! Read her, you will be in love with her writing just like everyone else, and for all the right reasons! A terrific collection.

[Chase]

Beautiful book. Full of heartbreak and love and that brimming-over feeling of not knowing what to do with yourself except to continue on as you always have. Hold your hand out for someone to take it.

Hope to write more on this soon, more than the post-read emptying high.

[Stacy]

My only problem with this collection is not with the writing--which is vibrant, sensuous, emotional--but with the flash form itself. I simply wanted to know more about these characters than such short stories can supply.

[Dawn]

Author interview here.

[Kate]

Leesa's lovers are observant and frank and they introduce you to a bottomless world of emotion--from turmoil to satisfaction. Inspired.

[Kima Jones]

Thoughts to come...

I have them.

[Corina]

there are like 87 lines in this book I want to tattoo on my flesh. as if they won't stay with me otherwise, which is laughable.

[Al Kratz]

Such a great collection. She's able to write things like "break-up" stories which could be so risky to being cliche, but she overcomes that with passion. These stories live and bleed.

[Jeida K. Storey]

Leesa’s Prose is Unmatched

Leesa Cross-Smith already convinced me she was brilliant after reading her debut novel, Whiskey & Ribbons, but with Every Kiss a War she has managed to convince me she has even more levels of depth, passion, and prose to offer the world. This collection of short stories read like character vignettes, allowing us access into the most vulnerable and secret places of memorable and poignant people. Cross-Smith seductively lures us into twenty-seven different stories and makes these people feel as though they live and breathe among us... and after just a few pages in their world, we miss them terribly. Her prose is unmatched—daring, musical, sensuous, unflinching.
A voice in literature I didn’t know I needed.

[Rikki]

Probably unfair of me to abandon it so quickly, but the writing was oddly confusing and felt off-putting, made more so by female characters who seemed little more than the watery cast shadow of women under the male gaze—like yes, this is how women are, these are authentic experiences, from an alienated place.

I might try again later, but there isn't much of a pull aside from not wanting to dislike this.

[Kefranks]

A nice story that in the hands of a less skilled writer could have been trite and formulaic. Author Leesa Cross-Smith includes unexpected twists and realistic flawed characters in a story about all phases of adult relationships, both familial and romantic. I was rooting for a happy ending but satisfied with the more realistic ending Cross-Smith delivered.

[Samantha]

Not my cup of tea. I'm not entirely sure that I like short stories so it might be me. I didn't find any of the stories memorable aside from the whiskey and ribbon snippet (I read the book). I found most of the characters frustrating but I appreciated how complicated they were. I could see why others enjoyed it but I couldn't get into it and it took me forever to finish.

[Caitlin]

A delightful little book of short stories, especially a propos for anyone enjoying infatuation or spiraling from a serious crush :) I found the book here: https://electricliterature.com/what-t...