Louse Point: Stories from the East End

“The seaside, working class hamlets of Raebeck’s LOUSE POINT are inhabited by half-broken people—the lost and alone, ballplayers and fishermen, the separated and grieving—all who share the modest dream of becoming the heroes of their own lives. Not many succeed, but none of them stop trying. If you didn’t know this was fiction you would assume Raebeck was writing about the real-life people he knows and he just painted them faithfully to their natural selves without a trace of sentimentality or likelihood of epiphany.  There’s sleight-of-hand here, too: by the book’s end the assortment of characters has quietly accumulated to illuminate the unique American landscape they share, the east end of Long Island. The people, and the world they inhabit, do exactly what all good fiction does: live on in memory long after you’ve finished reading.”

    —David Stevenson, author, most recently, of Warnings Against Myself

Shelby Raebeck has published fiction in anthologies and literary journals such as Mid-American Review, Callaloo, Southwestern Review, Hawaii Review, and Sudden Flash Youth, many set on the East End of Long Island where he grew up and now lives. Current projects include two novels, Sparrow Beach and Lazy Point, both of which contain characters and families wrestling with the contradictory nature of life on the East End.