Jess Walter

"Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause....

In his darkly comic short story collection, the author brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-four interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, yet filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. There is Victor, who as a nine-year-old crawled between his unconscious parents...

To commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the journal called 'a key barometer of the literary climate' by the New York Times and twice honored with a National Magazine Award for fiction, here is The Best of McSweeney's--a comprehensive collection of some of the magazine's most remarkable work. Drawing on the full range of the journal thus far--from the very earliest volumes to the Chris Ware-edited graphic novel issue to the full-on Sunday-newspaper...