From the Anglo-American woman who makes a spectacle of herself trying to be Cuban in Miami to the estranged son leading his father on a hostile hike in New Mexico, Valeri's characters carry a heavy load of desire and anger. Proud, loud, and hungry for whatever comes next, each person desperately searches for an understanding that lessens his or her burden. The saints here are pure only in their anger, desperation, and desire to be loved, holy only in their quest to keep going. These stories grow through subtle shifts—the bad becomes not so bad, the worst livable. It is the saintly moments of unexpected understanding that shape the collection: one gigolo's lover picks up another at a bus stop and they agree on his worthlessness, the love-worn man reminds the newly divorced woman of her physical power, the estranged son shelters his father from an unexpected storm. Valeri navigates the reader through the bones and scars of those who ache with wanting something else and become a little older and a little wiser for it. The Kind of Things Saints Do is a collection of human imperfections and missed connections that grows into a kaleidoscope of aspiration and hope.

The Kind of Things Saints Do (Volume 1) (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

Literature & Fiction

Valeri, Laura

United States

University Of Iowa Press

Safe in Your Head is an epic story about war and love. It's about the ambitions that haunt us through decades as the ghosts of our ancestors thrive in our dreams, memories, and our most cherished hopes. Ever since he was a boy, Vittorio wanted to live in America. He remembers cases of chocolate and peanut butter dropping in parachutes from the sky. He remembers American military camps ringing with rock and roll. Then in 1978, as an adult and father of three, Vittorio moves his family to New York to escape the chaos that is Italy under the terrorism of the Red Brigades. But his mother in-law, Liliana, will have to wrestle with the most devastating loss since the death of her husband, Giorgio, who was a resistance fighter. Liliana must face again a wrenching loss so many decades after Giorgio's death when Vittorio takes her daughter and her grand-children to America. The family will all try to adapt to their new lives, honoring the past through recipes, and their belief in magic and good luck. And still they are haunted by the one decision that Giorgio took upon himself so long ago.. [Contains original cooking recipes and ancient good luck charms.]

Safe in Your Head

Stephen F. Austin University Press

Mapping stories set in Europe and America, The Dead Still Here skillfully paces through eleven short stories about friends-with-benefits typed relationships, vicious divorces and thievery, the loss of a child, the loss of a mother, and the Coast Guard and the Navy rescuing refugees from a bad storm at sea. Laura Valeri writes one single breathtaking sentence about sex, Dear John emails, and Christmas presents in "Liabilities of a Love Misguided" and vividly recreates that sharp sense of self-consciousness in "What They Know." Along with characters that are irrevocably locked in their heads, Valeri includes a guide on how to take medication in "Prescription for Life," which subtly points to the other hallucinatory narratives. This collection is at once provocative and lucid, and it offers various angles of characters looking for a relationship to hold.

The Dead Still Here

Short Stories & Anthologies

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Valeri, Laura. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Valeri, Laura

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Valeri, Laura. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Kind of Things Saints Do (Volume 1) (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

Safe in Your Head

The Dead Still Here