Michael Alessi’s Call a Body Home, oh my Lord. Just geez. In the name of anything holy, get thee to its pages. It’s scripture if written by a blade of grass. It’s gorgeous and true. It’s a breath followed by a breath. Do you see what it’s done to me? I’m a believer, now.

—Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat Only When You’re Hungry

Gut-wrenching and hauntingly beautiful, the stories in this collection grapple with working-class life in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Call a Body Home evokes a myriad of emotions, and while hardly any of these characters are unscathed by the harshness of their daily lives, Alessi’s gorgeous prose will keep readers riveted.

—Stephanie Andrea Allen, author of A Failure to Communicate

In the tradition of Southern writers such as Breece D’J Pancake, the stories of Call a Body Home explore the borderlessness between nature, violence, and memory against the rural Appalachian backdrop of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Its characters are working class parents, children and siblings struggling to maintain the familial ties and traditions that bind them together, even as time and trauma threaten to uproot them. By turns savage and soulful, Call a Body Home offers a melodic portrait of the modern South and how we fight through hardship and grief to find a way home.