The Thief of Words

by Anthony Bukoski

The Thief of Words is filled with desperate runaways, the unhappily married, and the displaced. They often long for happiness but struggle to explain—even to themselves—what that would entail.

The lightly interconnected stories in this riveting collection are split between the Polish American communities of northern Wisconsin and Louisiana, where refugees from World War II were resettled under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The collection explores themes of dislocation and assimilation, love and loneliness, and generational conflict. Anthony Bukoski admirably paints portraits of people doing their best, despite the odds and their sometimes-thwarted attempts to follow the urgings of their better angels.

Filled with humor and pathos and populated by fully realized characters, this is a beautifully written collection from an accomplished storyteller.

Genres: Short Stories

184 pages, Paperback

Published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Tom Johnson]

"it's not unusual in Superior," writes Anthony Bukoski is his most recent collection of short stories, The Thief of Words," for fog and mist to blanket everything. On those days it's hard to see the ore docks and the King Midas flour mill." The ore docks and the flour mill, hard against Lake Superior, are touchstones in Bukoski's world and the rust-belt town of Superior, Wisconsin, secured by cement and steel to a vast, dangerous lake. Still, it is his town, the real and the fictional, and he has written often and brilliantly about it.

His Superior is not exactly a city of abundance, but neither is it a place of scarcity. If you work hard, we infer, you can get by. Winters are brittlely cold; the summers dusty. You get by. It is in the "getting by" that Bukoski locates and explores his characters and stories. Forlorn, anxious, eager, ambitious, brokenhearted, his women and men pursue, in this cold climate, redemption, forgiveness, love.

In The Thief of Words, Bukoski has once again demonstrated his patience; his stories are honest, witty, unsentimental, and beautifully observed. His characters are not commonplace. He has tried throughout his writing life, I think, to discover and reveal the nature of love--fathers and sons, husbands and wives, deckhands, bartenders, bread deliverymen, punch drunk fighters, lonely foreign students, wannabee '50s rock stars, failed school teachers. Many fail at love, in fact, most fail at love; some--a happy few--don't. Bukoski renders all of those souls with tenderness and dignity.

[Kaitlin C]

The Thief of Words is a stunning collection that lingers in the mind long after the final page. Anthony Bukoski has crafted a set of lightly interconnected stories that explore the Polish American experience across two distinct landscapes, the frozen north of Wisconsin and the humid bayous of Louisiana, both shaped by the displacement of World War II refugees.

What makes this collection so powerful is Bukoski's ability to render his characters with such compassion and clarity. These are desperate runaways, unhappily married couples, and people who have been uprooted from everything they knew. They long for happiness but often can't articulate what that would even look like. And yet, Bukoski never judges them. He depicts their thwarted attempts to follow their better angels with humor, pathos, and an almost unbearable tenderness.

The stories are beautifully written, with fully realized characters who feel like people you've known your whole life. The themes of dislocation and assimilation, love and loneliness, and generational conflict are explored with such nuance that each story feels like a complete world unto itself. And the connections between the stories, subtle, surprising, and deeply satisfying, make this collection feel like a novel in fragments.

If you love short stories, literary fiction, or the work of George Saunders and Alice Munro, you need to read this collection. It's a quiet masterpiece about what it means to be displaced, to long for home, and to keep going despite the odds.G

[Douglas H.]

Many of the stories in "Thief of Words" are set in the hard-luck city of Superior, Wisconsin. The protagonists are members of the city's Polish-American community. These are blue-collar, church-going Catholics. They work in flour mills and on lake boats and the railroad. They play the accordian, belong to Polish clubs, and try to keep alive the traditions and language they brought with them from Poland. It is a losing battle.

Loss and yearning for the past permeate these stories. But family ties and love moderate what could otherwise have been a bleak collection. The writing is sensitive and nuanced, and sometimes poetic. Reading the book, I learned a lot about a place and culture that are often overlooked in American fiction.

[Vickie]

This is an amazing collection of literary short stories. The opening story, "King Creole," which is nearly a novella, features a woman who fancies herself as Blanche DuBois, and another character Earl Slinker, who fancies himself as the next Elvis. The story has the gritty, intense feel of the movie A Streetcar Named Desire. The title story "The Thief of Words" is my favorite. It's a stunning story of a father's love and his son's uncertainty of that love. While, Anthony Bukoski's collection of stories often capture the lives of the working class, his stories transcend any labels, and the themes in his stories are timeless.

[Marie Zhuikov]

Some of the stories were trippy, most about love and longing, one about accordions. Almost all have a connection to Superior WI.

[Michaela]

Interesting. I was unfamiliar with Polish migration to the US and their settlement in the South working on sugar cane "plantations".

[Deb]

Tough to get through and I couldn’t.

[Susan Snowden]

I've read a number of Bukoski's story collections, and this one is my favorite!