American Animism

by Jamey Gallagher

Animals inhabit the edges of the stories in
American Animism, the astonishing debut
collection from Jamey Gallagher. Veering
between realism and magical realism, each
story illuminates something necessary,
something true. A girl working in a cryptid
museum, a boy in the attic of a gift shop on
Mystery Hill, a vacation house in Nova Scotia
where strange things happen: these are stories
of transformation and becoming.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Anthologies

228 pages, Paperback

Published March 11, 2025

About the author

Jamey Gallagher lives in Baltimore and teaches at the Community College of Baltimore County. His stories have been published in more than seventy venues, including Punk Noir Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Pembroke Magazine, Bull Fiction, and LIT Magazine. Look for his collection, American Animism, published by Cornerstone Press.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this collection of stories: real characters; chilling atmospheric settings; great prose. A loud storm broke then calmed on the other side of my window as I finished the last story and it felt appropriate: the reality and surrealism of nature; the thoughtful denouement after a surreal happening. I loved “Lost Mothers,” which made me think of my recent read of The Shape of What Remains, as well as an old read: Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of short stories! Each time I was fascinated by how much character building the author could cram into just a few pages, the stories producing a diverse set of humans dealing with tough situations that often bring out the baser, animalistic side of our nature. Sometimes in darker ways than others.

Highlights for me were Monster Girl, Lakes and Rivers, Cold Cold Bright Bright, The Blue of Broken Bones and Mystery Hill. Would recommend!

[Sam Kimball · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jamey Gallagher's American Animism sings the true notes of a masterful story teller. His characters are relatable whether they are cold blooded killers or quirky millennials in search of some mythical beast. Gallagher gets inside the heads of the people that populate these pages in such a way that brings you face to face with whatever they are dealing with. You feel what they are feeling, and when you leave each story, a visceral impression of the protagonist lives on inside of you. He parries between the awkward humor and chilling intents of each of his characters with ease. They are human in every imaginable aspect, even when some animal spirit inhabits their being.
I highly recommend this book, and feel certain you will be pleased with the journey these stories take you on.
Sam Kimball

[Ted Fristrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read some of these stories in earlier publications. I was always impressed with the range of Gallagher’s characters, including everything from a teenager living on a wolf habitat, a police officer recovering from a fall, an elderly Vietnamese woman looking after the house of a composer. It’s another thing to see them in a collection, where common motifs and themes appear in uncommon places. Animals abound. Sometimes, they are front and center, looming like totem figures, harbingers of another world. Sometimes, they are just snuffling around the edges. Canids, admittedly, get more than their fair share of page space: “A Wolf at the Door,” “K-9,” “Whippet,” “Coyote,” “Dogs.” But there are also birds, mice, deer. Some are irreducibly strange, like a mummified baby crocodile or a man’s recurring fantasy that his crush is carrying a fetus with the face of a llama. Some are pets. Don’t get too attached to the pets.

The first story sets the tone for all that follows. In “Monster Girl Survives a Close Call,” the narrator, who also goes by D, and Hal have worked together at the Cryptid Museum of New Jersey for years. Hal is about to move away. This circumstance pushes them to take their tenuous co-worker relationship out of the “office” and onto an overnight trek to see if they can find the infamous Jersey Devil. In other hands, this might have been a meet-cute for a YA novel with werewolves, but it’s not. Monster Girl and Hal don’t hook up, thank goodness. She’s interested in girls, and he’s fifteen years older; she’s recovering from assault, and he’s really sweaty. But they do get closer as friends, and the connection is genuine. But this is key: in this story and in others, we often see characters shedding their old skin, but we’re never quite sure what they’re turning into. The futures of D and Hal remain uncertain, fluid, and full of portent. Do we get to see the Jersey Devil? “The wings, you saw it’s wings right?” Hal says. D agrees, but probably only graciously. The world makes no more sense than it did the night before. It may even be a little stranger, full of wonders.

[Kim Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author of this book, Jamey Gallagher, is a colleague where I teach in Baltimore. Two years before this book came out I had taught one of his stories —A Wolf at the Door—in my writing class, and Jamey did a classroom visit with the students. The experience was truly excellent and the students really loved the experience. The students dove into interesting conversations offering up various theories about what this mysterious, surreal story is about… The Wolf at the Door appears in this collection, which is thoroughly impressive. Honestly I thought that Wolf was going to be the centerpiece and possibly even the crowning achievement in the book, but I was in for a happy surprise. This collection is loaded with really cool, interesting, and provocative stories. Jamey has invented and developed a huge variety of characters, situations and worlds. Language, plot, imagery, dialogue, and other reasons to keep reading—all drew me in. While reading I felt an unmistakable momentum and narrative force building as I moved through each successive piece. So I recommend reading from front to back, all the way to the last two masterpieces.

For any and all instructors out there, several of these stories would make for provocative classroom readings. I hope to assign a couple of them this fall. Maybe I’ll update this review after I see how it goes.

Great collection!

[Amy · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

I decided to read this book this month based on the title and cover--I imagined something spooky. I was wrong, but that's okay. Just like these stories--pretty okay. I think some of them were so short that they didn't leave much of a lasting impression (aside from the story that this collection is named after). I also didn't feel moved by many of the endings. There was one that ended with: "He had some decisions to make." Well, okay. At the same time, though, the stories were all readable, meaning that they propelled me forward--I did not abandon any of them. Some of them steered into a Stephen King direction, too, but again, just didn't quite make it to that level of storytelling. Though a handful, particularly "Wolf Haven," really felt complete and good, with a lovely ending to boot!

[Marie Zhuikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories with their animal themes. There's also some swimming in them, too. My favorite story was Wolf Haven. As a former wolf novelist, I found the wolf behavior accurate and the characters' interactions with the pack true to form. This is a great read if you want something mysterious and heartfelt.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean, yes, he's my brother. But still: great stuff. Weird, wild, well-wrought.

[Toby LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a master class in the human nature underlying our national psyche. These stories unearth our deepest desires, our most animal of urges, to find where our darkest roots find their nourishment. Written in time periods that span the later twentieth century to the most recent pandemic, Gallagher provides tales that are sometimes horrifying, sometimes sweet, but always enlightening. It starts with "Monster Girl" where it is easier to be in the company of cryptid monsters of our region than of actual monsters made of men on our streets; or the scariest cryptid of all: loneliness. He finishes with “Mystery Hill,” another story about the occult and the unspoken that creates monsters. It doesn’t feel circular, though. It feels more like returning home after a journey. I use the word journey because that is what the book feels like. One moment you are fighting your demons. The next you are appreciating them. The middle of this book shines because he does, in fact, tear through that hard to define middle place of life we all seem to find ourselves in most of the time. A juicy line that had me staring at the wall in contemplation was, "There was this insurmountable barrier between good and great, and somehow I knew that I’d never break through it, and the whole trick to living life would be to determine how I could go on living with that fact.” The story "Our Lady of Eternal Sorrow" was a standout to me. It embodies the definition of animism, allowing the death of a young woman in a small neighborhood to embody both the worst and the best of the people left living. In her dying she becomes better living standards, wretched desires, and a legend. It's a testament to how the American Dream depends on what each person's dreams are made of, and how they often can't come to life unless something else dies. American Animism is one of those think-about-it-long-after-you-encounter-the-back-cover books.