Day out of Days Stories

From one of our most acclaimed writers: a collection of tales set mainly in the American West, written with the terse lyricism, cinematic detail, and wry humor that have become Sam Shepard’s trademarks.

A man traveling down Highway 90 West gets trapped alone overnight inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where he is tormented by an endless loop of Shania Twain songs. A wandering actor returns to his hometown and runs into an old friend, who recounts their teenage days of stealing cars, buying Benzedrine, and sleeping with whores in Tijuana. A Minnesota couple and their children, traveling south for vacation, are so caught up in the ordinary dramas of family life that they remain oblivious to the beauty of the Yucatan peninsula. Stunning, inventive, and powerful, these stories are Shepard at his flinty-eyed, unwavering best.

“Shepard drills down through the strata of our history into the bedrock of American myth.” –Walter Kirn, The New York Times Book Review

“Expansive and rich. . . . With scenarios that are at once unbearable and irresistible, Shepard casts a predictably haunting spell.” –USA Today

“Gorgeous. . . . Searing. . . . Shepard beautifully records the overlooked, strange places men find themselves, both physically and emotionally.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Sharp enough to move a reader to tears. . . . Funny and smart. . . . Profoundly satisfying. . . . The narrator talks out his conflicts . . . with great precision and beauty.” –The Boston Globe

“Expansive, panoramic. Like Bob Dylan, Shepard is a geographer of the rawboned surrealism of America’s shadow interior, story after story bearing the name of a town or highway, our national portrait dabbed with a thousand points of darkness.” –James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

“These stories have a deep, abiding appeal.” –The Los Angeles Times

“This is Shepard’s brilliance—the ability to continually surprise us. He plays with our heads, pushes boundaries, and in the end makes the journey worthwhile.” –The Denver Post

“Shepard is one of the most lavishly gifted, prolific artists of his generation.” –The Plain Dealer

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