What happens when ordinary people are pushed beyond their ordinary lives? What happens when we are challenged to transcend our everyday circumstances, take a fearful risk, accept the dare, perhaps change who we are? Treading a line between pain and passion, adventure and menace, Stop Breakin Down tells various stories of people driven to the brink of endurance and survival. In the title story, a group of young people commit themselves to a drunken car chase around the Baltimore beltway; in "Gegenschein," a young student leaves his campus life to submerge himself into the desolate wilderness of the Smoky Mountains; and in "The Magothy Fires," a boy seeks to become a man by participating in an ancient ritual of pain and courage.
"Fierce, vivid and disturbing, these stories rupture our expectations at every wild turn. Hold on! If you're ready to ride, the fearless language of Stop Breakin Down will leave you shaken and exhilarated."
MELANIE RAE THON, AUTHOR OF FIRST , BODY "As one of John McManus's searching narrators says, 'It's midnight but yes there is brightness." Stop Breakin Down is full of sickness and hope, ugliness and love, as its people are only beginning to realize."
STEWART O'NAN, AUTHOR OF A PRAYER FOR THE DYING
"John McManus writes fast, scary, crackling prose -- so good that only afterward, when our heartbeats have slowed, do we realize how deeply and brightly his stories have burned. In the afterimage, we realize how much and how clearly we've seen."
PAUL CODY, AUTHOR OF SO FAR GONE
"McManus's stories surprise, excite and delight. I loved them."
DARCEY STEINKE, AUTHOR OF JESUS SAVES
Cover design by Henry Sene Yee
Cover Photograph © Wilhelm Scholz/Stone
Share your thoughts on the
Stop Breakin Down
ebook with other internet viewers!
