The nine stories in Mike Alberti’s debut collection shine a sharp light on small-town American life —not the Arcadian small towns of yesteryear, but the old mill towns hanging on after the mill has stopped running, the deserted agricultural communities in the middle of vast industrial farms, places where bad luck has become part of the weather. But even in these blighted, neglected landscapes, the possibility of renewal always presents itself: there is hope for these places and the characters who inhabit them. In these fresh, innovative stories, some people let you down, but some people don’t.
“The key to Mike Alberti’s Some People Let You Down is the emotional gravity that dominates these characters’ lives, drawing them down into themselves, their pasts, their home towns. This is character-driven fiction at its finest.”— Zach VandeZande, author of Liminal Domestic: Stories and judge