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A widower searching for solace in competitive eating. A mother and daughter preparing their living room for the rapture. A young couple looking for reasons to reconnect on a trip to the mountains. A grieving sister and her alcoholic brother sharing a home for the first time since childhood. Siblings and Other Disappointments follows an array of characters searching for comfort—in parents and children, in brothers and sisters, in strangers and friends. Scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest, its twelve stories are stories of place, as stark and infinitely complex as the landscape itself. Author Kait Heacock’s debut collection is an examination of relationships and isolation within working-class families and a tribute to the little victories and traumas of everyday life.
Praise for Siblings and Other Disappointments
“Heacock’s stories feel like tiny homecomings, like peering in the windows of the real Northwest and glimpsing its shabby, secret heart. These characters’ poignancy is in the smallness of their desires: to sit down again at the same counter; to be seen; to touch hands across the darkness, even as time makes them—and all of us—obsolete.”
— Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home
“These are closely observed, unsentimental stories about parents, children, husbands, and wives finding their uncertain way after wreckage has laid them low. Yet the heartache at the center of these stories is leavened by Heacock’s clear-eyed compassion and humor. This finely crafted debut collection heralds an important new voice in the literary West.”
— K. L. Cook, author of The Girl from Charnelle and Last Call
“The close-up character studies in Kait Heacock’s stories are full of real-life pain, sadness, and desire. Although there are a lot of heartbreaking goodbyes throughout Siblings and Other Disappointments, the encouraging thing is that this book is one hearty hello to an impressive new storyteller.”
— Kevin Sampsell, author of This Is Between Us
Siblings and Other Disappointments
Start-to-Finish
New Year, New YouKait Heacock’s Siblings and Other Disappointments is out in the world, and maybe even at a bookstore near you! It’s been a journey. As a team, we’ve all been grappling with some mixed emotions lately—from the particular thrill of seeing hard work pay off to the melancholy feeling of saying goodbye to an old friend—but what is Siblings itself if not an emotionally complicated experience from start to finish? We continue to be blown away by the positive and personal reactions that Siblings elicits in its readers, including this lovely review from Lauren O’Brien in Shelf Awareness. Though the lion’s share of our work with Siblings is behind us now, we’ll still be keeping up with the book—and with Kait, as she too moves on to new and different things. Keep an eye on Ooligan’s Facebook page and Twitter account for all the updates. (But you’re already following us, right?)
