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Stateway's Garden
- Stories
- Narrated by: Guy Lockard, Shayna Small, Sullivan Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
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Publisher's summary
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A blazingly original story collection about the interconnected lives of the residents of a public housing project on the South Side of Chicago.
"The residents and their buoyant dreams are documented, celebrated, honored. I bow to this writer in gratitude." (Sandra Cisneros)
Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Chicago Tribune
Before being torn down in 2007, the Stateway Gardens public housing projects on Chicago’s South Side were ridden with deprivation and crime. But for some, like Tracy, the shy, intelligent young boy at the center of this enthralling collection of linked stories, they are simply home. Set in the mid-1980s and taking listeners up to the point of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects - a set of buildings similar in design to Stateway Gardens to the south - this collection gives an intimate look at the hopes, dreams, failures, and fortunes of a group of people growing up with the deck always stacked against them. Through Jasmon Drain’s sensitive and often playful prose, we see another side of what we have come to know as "the projects".
Stateway’s Garden is a coming-of-age story told in short stories, through the lens of a childhood made rough by the crush of poverty and violence, with the crack epidemic a looming specter ahead. And yet, through the experiences and ambitions of Tracy and other young characters, Drain reveals a vibrant community that creates its own ecosystem, all set in a series of massive, seemingly soulless concrete buildings. Not shying away from the darkness of life for his characters, Drain shows the full complexity of their human experiences.
Exquisitely detailed and novelistic in scope, this collection of stories will linger in your mind long after you have heard the final word.
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Critic reviews
“About Chicago, Jasmon Drain knows a thing or two. He writes about a housing project so grim that those who move in dream of leaving. Stateway’s Garden as a community is long gone, destroyed by gentrification. But the residents and their buoyant dreams are documented, celebrated, honored. I bow to this writer in gratitude.” (Sandra Cisneros, author of Caramelo)
“The only fireworks in Jasmon Drain’s subtly rendered, beautiful debut are the ones his young characters watch explode in the distance from the public housing project they live in. These are patient, profoundly compassionate stories about the small shocks and flickers of transcendence in ordinary Chicagoans’ lives. Told in hauntingly spare prose reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s, Drain’s stories take a moment to sink in. Once they do, they don’t leave you.” (Sam Graham-Felsen, author of Green)
“Characters seek soft shelter in these powerfully felt, interconnected stories.... Capturing an intricate portrait of Stateway Gardens (a real place that was razed in 2007), Drain mines the idea that life in the projects could be both a thing to escape and something to nurture, a matter made more critical by the ticking clock of gentrification.... A deep, vibrant collection.” (Booklist)
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Rosemary Rabourne is already struggling to pay the bills when her recently orphaned half sister, Wendy, shows up at her door. Rosemary will try anything to provide for the traumatized teenager—including offering her services as a high-end escort. Leo Glass is the billionaire CEO of a revolutionary social app. He wants the “girlfriend experience”—someone contractually obligated to love him—and he thinks he’s found the perfect match in Rosemary.
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Good but not uplifting story
- By Kim on 08-02-23
By: Rebecca Kelley
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The People We Keep
- By: Allison Larkin
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorless motorhome that her father won in a poker game. Failing out of school, picking up shifts at a local diner, she’s left fending for herself in a town where she’s never quite felt at home. When she “borrows” her neighbor’s car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that’s all hers.
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Absolutely loved this book!
- By chatteycathi on 08-09-21
By: Allison Larkin
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Where I Left Her
- By: Amber Garza
- Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Whitney had some misgivings when she dropped her increasingly moody teenage daughter, Amelia, off at Lauren’s house. She’d never met the parents, and usually she’d go in, but Amelia clearly wasn’t going to let something so humiliating happen, so instead Whitney waved to her daughter before pulling away from the little house with the roses in front. But when she goes back the next day, an elderly couple answers the door - Amelia and Lauren aren’t there, and this couple swears they never were, that she’s at the wrong house.
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Kept me guessing!!
- By Sheppardspie on 09-13-21
By: Amber Garza
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When a Stranger Comes to Town
- By: Michael Koryta
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Janina Edwards, Fajer Al-Kaisi, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
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It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.
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The narrators are outstanding here.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 05-16-21
By: Michael Koryta
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Face It
- By: Georgette Kaplan
- Narrated by: Anastasia Watley
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
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In college, Elizabeth Smile shared a magical tryst with her roommate, Michelle Harlow. She had no idea the night would leave Elizabeth pining after her for the next ten years. Now Michelle is back with a strange offer: Will she pretend to be Michelle's lesbian lover to beat Michelle's cheating husband?
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Give it a chance—brilliant!
- By Meredith on 01-22-23
By: Georgette Kaplan
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House of Sand and Fog
- By: Andre Dubus III
- Narrated by: Andre Dubus III, Fontaine Dollas Dubus
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
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In this riveting novel of almost unbearable suspense, three fragile yet determined people become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Colonel Behrani, once a wealthy man in Iran, is now a struggling immigrant willing to bet everything he has to restore his family's dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a troubled young woman whose house is all she has left, and who refuses to let her hard-won stability slip away from her. Sheriff Lester Burdon becomes obsessed with helping her fight for justice.
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I suspect I am going to be in the minority . . .
- By BogKid on 01-12-04
By: Andre Dubus III
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Nero
- Made Men, Book 1
- By: Sarah Brianne
- Narrated by: Aaron Landon
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Nero is the king of Legacy Prep, living a life of power. Elle is the school's punching bag, living a life of fear.
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two words...Amazing and hott!
- By Jenee's Reviews on 09-15-15
By: Sarah Brianne
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1836, Wisconsin. Catalina lives with her pa and brother in a ramshackle cabin on the edge of the wilderness. Harsh winters have brought the family to the brink of starvation, and Catalina has replaced her poet's soul with an unyielding determination to keep Pa and her brother alive. When a sudden illness claims Pa, a strange man appears—a man covered in bark, leaves growing from his head, and sap dripping from his eyes.
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What listeners say about Stateway's Garden
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sarz
- 01-15-21
Timely and engrossing
As a Chicago native this book resonated strongly for me.
The upwelling of systemic racism associated with the Trump administration provides a vivid backdrop to these stories of bright, intelligent, capable young people relegated to obscurity because of a chemical in their epidermis.
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Overall
- Warren Holloway
- 09-09-20
Not what you would expect
Solid coming of age story that keeps you engage. The writer is colorful and can really bring you into the moments that impact the characters on a visceral level.
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