Outskirts Press, INC.

Andrew J. Olson takes readers to rural Minnesota, where children are essential parts in the machinery of everyday life. Young men learn that hard work is its own reward, and that promises can be reaped from the land. However, workaday tragedies lie in wait, and Mother Nature is brutish in her lack of sympathy. Fortunately, the sense of duty that comes with living in a small community helps to temper both grief and loss, and in the end, we find that the heart of the heart of the country is a gift that can’t be sought, only found. “For those of us who are blessed to live on corn-speckled streets, these stories by Andrew J. Olson ring true. There is also a universality that readers will recognize as Olson tells stories that explore family relationships, innocence, loss, grief, revenge. We reach into the stories, and they surprise us, move us, encourage us, and help us to see ourselves, each other, and the world more clearly.” – David Bengtson, author of Broken Lines: Prose Poems. “In this evocative first collection set mostly on family farms in west central Minnesota, Andrew J. Olson strips his haunted young men of everything but their pride... these characters live in hardscrabble but resilient emotional territory. This is their survival manual, and Olson writes it with a flair for the telling episode or detail.” – Alan Davis, author of So Bravely Vegetative and Rumors from the Lost World. “Set in Minnesota, the stories of Barn Stripping and Other Stories are written with a starkness that matches the often bleak winter landscapes of their settings. Death is matter-of-fact here, yet so is life. Part William Saroyan, part Kent Haruf, Olson writes with tenderness and wisdom about a world he knows well.” – Lori Ostlund, author of The Bigness of the World. “Barn Stripping strips away all literary excess, cuts to the bone and offers us compact and compelling tales of contemporary rural life. These stories are as spare, pristine and haunting as the windswept landscapes they so vividly evoke.” – Elizabeth Searle, author of Girl Held In Home.