Slipshod and Standing by B.L. Makiefsky

Slipshod and Standing—Makiefsky’s new coming-of-age stories that continue the narrative of Mark Silver from Fathers and Sons—surrounded me with the beauty and broken-heartedness that only Northern Michigan can evoke. Makiefsky journeys into the snow, into the night, into the blue collar truths we should all know—pulling readers through on heartstrings and prayers—always delivering us to the warm truth of the other side.

–Katey Schultz, award winning author of Flashes of War, and Still Come Home

Praise for Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons is an elegant and flint-eyed look at families, love, and the natural world outside the window at dusk, in the autumn, or the first snowfall—or that first late night of spring when the day goes gloriously on … These wonderful stories are evocative of many things, of place, the weather system of moods between men and women. Makiefsky’s stories are a gift not only to fathers and sons, but to readers who love great writing. A startling and memorable debut.

–Doug Stanton, New York Times best-selling author of The Odyssey of Echo Company, Horse Soldiers, and In Harm’s Way

Makiefsky has deftly pulled us into this place where the heat makes us dizzy and hallucinatory, and where the snow blinds us to what we need, what we believe we want. The prose is rich and evocative, amusing and moving, sensory and bold. And there is transcendence here as the stories invite us into the lives of these men, then lift us above northern Michigan’s woods and rolling hills, its bay and lakeshore, to a new place of familiarity and of understanding.

A place where we—and the men of these stories—may find grace.

–Patricia Ann McNair, award winning author of The Temple of Air, And These Are the Good Times, and Responsible Adults