I’ll be interviewing R.S. Deeren, Michigan author, about his new book of stories, Enough to Lose. Here’s what I have to say about it: "This book is the best thing I’ve read lately, with its dead-on depictions of rural life, both beautiful and heart-wrenching. With its floods, guns, car wrecks, dangerous bridges, bars that ‘stay open out of habit,’ there’s a lot at stake here. Deeren is a keen observer of what age, poverty, and bad luck can do to a body: forty-five is, he says, ‘the age where you’ll have enough to lose that you’ll lose yourself in the process of trying to hold onto everything.’ Some of his characters live so close to the edge that the failure of a freezer might mean going hungry, while others move closer to the edge to feel alive or to grieve fully. If you say these characters are stubbornly behind the times, it’s because they are not buying what America is offering them—they are holding out for something better and more meaningful. They have tasted the sweetness of romantic love, they have felt in their bones the elegance of a deer crossing a river. Deeren’s strong, sure, authentic voice sings the songs of Michigan, and you should listen."