hoist House: A Novella and Stories by Jenny Robertson
With power and compassion, Jenny Robertson weaves tales that explore the precarity of immigrant life, worker exploitation, the tensions and dangers inherent in growing up, and the ephemeral nature of the American Dream. In these stories a performer manages a First Avenue dancefloor while his estranged father takes his last breaths back home; a Michigan tornado spotter grieves the end of his marriage; Maggie Pancake returns to her Minnesota hometown, jilted by her fiancée, a professional clown; and the titular novella follows fourteen-year-old Sadie and her Finnish immigrant mining family in Iron Range Minnesota in the months leading up to the Milford Mine disaster of 1924.
“These comedies and tragedies are sweaty and fragrant, brimming with energy, and the language is exuberant.”
— Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist, author of American Salvage
“Beautiful and shattering, these stories cut deep grooves into my memory.”
— Alexandra Lytton Regalado, author of Relinquenda
“Every next story took me deeper, and deeper into that human realm where hilarity and tears combine in a rare and lovely kind of magic.”
— Jack Driscoll, author of 20 Stories: New & Selected
“Jenny Robertson’s stories evoke my favorite Midwestern writers: Jon Hassler, Joan Chase, and Jim Harrison—no-nonsense storytellers who lure you in with a sentence and then keep you rapt with prose as straight as an arrow aimed at your heart.”
— John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph
“Jenny Robertson’s Hoist House is an unforgettable collection of stories, a gritty and glittering panorama as graceful as it is riotously alive.”
— Chris McCormick, author of The Gimmicks and Desert Boys
“Hoist House mines the strata of its characters’ lives alongside the emotional archaeology of the Upper Midwest. The stories and novella are grounded by loss and a hope for redemption—whether that finds its form in celebrations of the physical body or protection from the weathers of our world.”
— Elizabeth Oness, author of Twelve Rivers of the Body
“Hoist House will thrill readers with an exciting new voice. a rare and accurate depiction of humanity on the edge, of people growing up marginal and beautiful and earth-cut by ore. It’s a powerhouse of a read.”
— Anne-Marie Oomen, author of As Long As I Know You
“Hoist House amazes me with its unforgettable cast of characters. Jenny Robertson has conjured a stunning debut that every reader should cherish.”
— Craig Lesley, author of Winterkill and The Sky Fisherman
“This fierce and fearless collection—set in a vividly drawn Midwestern landscape—is full of dangers and delights, intense voices and complex characters, unlikely allies and heroes. I did not want these stories to enD.”
— Patricia Ann McNair, author of Responsible Adults
About jenny
Jenny Robertson is a fiction writer and poet from Minnesota and Michigan currently living in Wisconsin. Her fiction has appeared in South Carolina Review, SLAB, Hypertext, Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Cutthroat, and Gulf Stream Lit Mag. She has taught creative writing and literature at Front Street Writers, Interlochen Arts Camp, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Ellipsis Writing. Jenny holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University and a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
