An extraordinary and unforgettable short story collection about community, home, betrayal, and forgiveness—from a writer whose “spellbinding, buoyant”* storytelling will break your heart as it tends to the wounds. *Texas Monthly In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side. And “Time After” shows us the unshakable bonds of family as a sister journeys to find her estranged brother—the one who saved her many times over. Throughout Holler, Child, we see love lost and gained, and grief turned to hope. Much like LaToya Watkins’s acclaimed debut novel, Perish, this collection peers deeply into lives of women and men experiencing intimate and magnificent reckonings—exploring how race, power, and inequality map on the individual, and demonstrating the mythic proportions of everyday life.
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These are stories about family, about trauma, about the space we fill with those we love and the secrets we hold for them. Set mostly in West Texas, the short story collection grapples with themes like systemic racism, deep disappointment, and dysfunctional relationships, but amidst it all, there is also room for joy and love. A brilliant collection of stories of the Black experience with a steady voice and a strong point of view, and a reminder that we are not only borne of the choices we make, but of the world that forced us to make those choices.
