Bonnie Jo Campbell and Heidi Bell in conversation

A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town. On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp―an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan―herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three daughters. The youngest, beautiful and inscrutable Rose Thorn, has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild. Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. With a “ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world” (New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the novels Once Upon a River, a National Bestseller which was adapted into a full-length feature film released to international acclaim in 2020, and Q Road. Her critically-acclaimed short fiction collections include American Salvage, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Women and Other Animals, which won the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction; and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. She was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow whose other honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Eudora Welty Prize, and the Mark Twain Award. She lives outside Kalamazoo with her husband and two donkeys. www.bonniejocampbell.net

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Heidi Bell’s vibrant collection of short stories features a provocative cast of characters: Two sisters playing an unsettling game; an up-and-coming young professional disturbed by the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings; a woman whose ideal life unfolds in the pages of a mail-order catalog. The Midwestern men and women, girls and boys who populate Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse and Other Stories are united by a yearning—for answers or simply for relief—that is often twisted by their baser impulses. Unconventional in subject matter, form, or point of view, these stories—even when approaching reality sideways—examine the human condition with lyricism, humor, and searing clarity

Heidi Bell is an award-winning writer and editor. Her short fiction has appeared in many literary publications, including New England Review, The Good Men Project, Chicago Reader, Southeast Review, and The Seattle Review. She is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships. She resides with her husband in Aurora, IL. Visit: heidibellbooks.com.

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