The Galaxie and Other Rides Paperback - 2012

From the publisher

Fiction. Set primarily in post-industrial Detroit, these stories paint a portrait of the ways in which war and industry are co-implicated in the characters' struggles. Woods, for example, is told in the voice of a young woman whose brother is suffering from Gulf War Syndrome; their family is relocated when the government claims their land for the development of a missile site. In Deep, Michigan, a young gay soldier is attacked by his fellow Marines in Iraq while his best friend back home is desperate to join the ranks at General Motors.

These are powerful stories, alive in their shimmering detail and inhabited by characters as real--and disturbing--as the ones walking among us. THE GALAXIE AND OTHER RIDES is a smashing debut.--T. C. Boyle

Josie Sigler is fearless. Reading her stories, one feels many things at once: affirmed and soothed, shook up and challenged. You feel that, finally, someone is bearing witness to what we ignore or refuse to talk about. Her characters are vivid and insistent. They come to us from all walks of life and speak to us intimately, with heartbreaking clarity, so that we may understand them and, ultimately, ourselves. This book is necessary--and beautiful.--Dana Johnson

GALAXIE sears with its unflinching portraits of desperate individuals struggling for dignity, hope, and love in contemporary Rust Belt ruins. Here is an author truly intimate with her subjects, one who never condescends to her working-class characters. With language at times lyric and lush, at others raw and spare, Sigler has created a unique poetry of poverty and proves that beauty can outlast brutality.--Ann Pancake