Trouble Will Find You

When his parents promise that he can get a puppy if he can stay out of trouble for just one day, Desmond Diz Aster tries his best, but a burglar almost spoils his efforts.

In these three deeply observed novellas, award-winning author David Nikki Crouse dramatizes the lives of women living in Interior Alaska. Each novella acts as an extended meditation on grief, loss, and the nature of imagination. Crouse’s usual storytelling gifts are on full display here, but the darkness found in past short story collections is balanced by images of stark beauty. In “Misfortune and Its Double,” a woman remembers—and manufactures—the story of an arduous cross-country drive that might not be entirely true. “A Rough Map of the Interior” follows a woman’s life from suicide attempt to hospitalization to a new kind of self-knowledge, and “Asmodeus Speaks” lingers on a Dungeon and Dragons roleplaying game in remote Fairbanks and its disruption when one of its players, a young Yupik man, goes missing. While Crouse’s prize-winning collection of short fiction The Man Back There offered up insights into a kind of self-destructive masculinity, these novellas now sensitively and persuasively capture the inner landscapes of women struggling with grief and isolation. Trouble Will Save You is a unique and fully realized work from a keenly empathetic writer. Praise for The Man Back There: “In this virtuoso collection of stories, David Crouse guides us directly to where the shadow lies—the disorienting loss, the surprising heartache, the forgotten wound—those inevitable areas of the psyche we all share and through which only truth, illuminated with a such a light touch here, can deliver us; The Man Back There is the work of the real thing.” —Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog “I chose these stories because they made me feel. I felt the characters like I would feel a stranger in a room or on a bus with me, with an irrational sympathy more animal than moral in its nature.” —Mary Gaitskill, 2007 Mary McCarthy Prize judge

This book is a series of interpretive essays and limericks describing wise sayings from such authors as Jackson Brown, Stephen Covey, Edwin and Sally Kiester, William Bennett, John Rosemond, Steven Scott, Colin Powell, President Garfield and even Salada Tea "Tag Lines".

Some Suggested Thoughts on How to Use This Book Read it in the morning to gather strength and inspiration for the day, or at evening at the close of the day. This book of meditative thoughts can be used for family devotions, to show concern for others by sharing its thoughts with friends. "THIS BOOK CAN ALSO SERVE AS A TIE THAT BINDS" In order to feel closer to loved ones and friends living miles away, you can stay in touch by agreeing to read the same meditative thought at the same time each day. Since 1991, the author of this book has been doing a Thought For The Day on Clear Channel Radio Savannah, Georgia WSOK 1230 AM, Joy In The Morning. "I pray that God will anoint this book and that each meditation will change lives and be a source of comfort to all who read them" - Matthew S. Brown

Poet, critic, and hybrid-genre artist Johnson tracks the use of trouble in word, concept, and practice in this debut of brief, elliptical, lyric essays. He moves through a wide swath of 20th- and 21st-century music, always alert to a sense of melancholy shared among songwriters, their songs, and their listeners in the ever-growing web of popular music. "When we say 'trouble,' we refer to the history of trouble whether or not we have it in mind. When we sing trouble, we sing (with) history," Johnson writes. "A Trouble Song is a complaint, a grievance, an aside, a come-on, a confession, an admission, a resignation, a plea. It's an invitation-to sorrow." The effect of all this trouble is dizzying. Highly annotated-often to personal, humorous, and hidden effects-the book weaves among genres, chronologies, and various forms of trouble to ask "Where are we in song? Who are we in song?" Johnson suggests that an answer lies somewhere in the locus of singer, song, and listener-the "essential relations in the Trouble Song." Detouring into philosophy, cultural theory, and verse, Johnson works multilaterally to explore what trouble in popular music does to connect listeners, embolden them, and open a space from which trouble can be addressed across time.

"Meet Me Where I Am" takes the teachings and doctrines of The Bible and breaks them down into understandable language and applicable steps. "Many people will never tell you that they don't understand what The Bible teaches," says Pastor Lewis. "They will shake their head and say, Amen! but never grasp the principles that God desires for them to know." Pastor Lewis has developed, under God's direction, this 30 day devotional that you will have trouble putting down because of it's relevant voice that speaks the language of people who just want to hear God speak to them and "Meet Them Where They Are!"

“Henry Smith’s father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you.” But Trouble comes careening down the road one night in the form of a pickup truck that strikes Henry’s older brother, Franklin. In the truck is Chay Chouan, a young Cambodian from Franklin’s preparatory school, and the accident sparks racial tensions in the school—and in the well-established town where Henry’s family has lived for generations. Caught between anger and grief, Henry sets out to do the only thing he can think of: climb Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine, which he and Franklin were going to climb together. Along with Black Dog, whom Henry has rescued from drowning, and a friend, Henry leaves without his parents’ knowledge. The journey, both exhilarating and dangerous, turns into an odyssey of discovery about himself, his older sister, Louisa, his ancestry, and why one can never escape from Trouble.