Between Wrecks

"[The] unchallenged king of the comic Southern short story." —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"George Singleton writes about the rural South without sentimentality or stereotype but with plenty of sharp-witted humor. . . . A raconteur of trends, counter-trends, obsessions and odd characters."—NPR Morning Edition

"Thank God for George Singleton, who makes us laugh and makes us think."—The Times-Picayune

There’s a place just down the way where a trip to the salvage yard reveals infidelity and theft. There’s another where an unlicensed entomologist celebrates his freedom with a compulsive liar while a manhunt ensues on the streets outside. Places where a con man and his nephew sell stolen parachutes to veterans in case the ground beneath them should suddenly give way and where Chuck Norris’s face graces only the walls of the finest trailers. A place where tongues get left in rental cars and a place where everyone insists an absolute stranger is your boyhood friend.

Between Wrecks takes readers on a raucous bar crawl through an America both startlingly familiar and hilariously absurd, examining paranoia, fear, relentless “truths,” longstanding personal habits gone awry, and what it means to look toward a horizon that may or may not be a mirage.

George Singleton is the author of two novels and five short story collections, including Stray Decorum. A 2013 SIBA Book Award finalist, his work has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, and Playboy. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he was awarded the Hillsdale Award for Fiction by the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2011. He holds an MFA degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and currently teaches writing at South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities. He lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.