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Comments from others on Pick Up Stick City.
“Steve Semken’s quirky stories conjure the Midwest with all its eccentricity, mystery, charm and quiet beauty. The author creates vivid characters and remarkable events.These stories rival those of Sherwood Anderson, Jim Heynen, Michael Martone and Jane Smiley. Semken’s original work suggests gnarled wild apples—grotesque and more delicious than any standard orchard variety.”
—Craig Lesley, author, The Sky Fisherman and Burning Fence
“A precious rarity: part wisdom about how the world and its strange human creatures really work; part impish imagination like that of Dr. Seuss; part purveyor of a story with the mystery, beauty, and tranquility of Brigadoon. In Pick Up Stick City, Semken has created characters we recognize and relish for all their foibles, and a place that is miraculous in its potential. We find ourselves longing to be there, to see what unfolds next, and to share in its beauty. This story inspires us to do better by our human community, offers solace for our grief, and gives us courage to keep on”
—Gary Holthaus, author, Circling Back and Wide Skies: Finding a Home in the West
“Steve Semken finds his Middle Earth hidden among the Midwestern dust and rubble of a forgotten ghost town lost in Iowa hill country. In this fable, redemption is from a nether world where masters of short term memory are inexplicably reelected, farming is done by phone, and sarcasm reins. It’s an antidote for the twenty-first century’s linear, literal, myopia. It may be read also as an imagination user’s guide-a how-to manual for deploying mythology for the restoration of compassion, civility, wonder and awe.”
—Peter Sauer, Orion Society
“With stunning imagination and with a piercing understanding of human nature, Steve Semken reaches deeply into his magical bag of ancient wisdom and crafts a story that we all need to hear, understand, and enact. The fate of our society and our place on earth depend fundamentally on the restoration of our communities and our deep connections to home ground. Through the fabula of Pick Up Stick, Semken exhorts us to act upon our dreams and recreate what we have lost in this era of the posthuman.”
—Thomas K. Dean, Director, Iowa Project on Place Studies, University of Iowa
“Steve Semken is a master of invention. He rearranges our idea of fiction in his latest creation, Pick Up Stick City. The magical hero grows up sculpting clouds and catching thunder in jars. Then he repopulates a Midwestern ghost town by bringing the inhabitants back to life. This twist on Wilder’s Our Town seems familiar, and the setting is accurate, but Semken’s voice is unlike anything heard before. Praises be, Semken is an original.”
—Denise Low, Haskell Indian Nations University & author, Spring Geese and Touching The Sky
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