With heart and precision, and a fresh and resilient humor, Bad Kansas reveals the lives people are living in that flyover state in a collection in which every sentence is a made thing, never merely a vehicle for conveying information to the reader. Mandelbaums sharp eye for detail, a deep emotional intelligence, and a slightly cantedyet ultimately compassionateworldview combine to produce complex, authentic, empathic characters, reminiscent of two of the greatest place-based collections ever: Richard Fords Rock Springs and Annie Proulxs Close Range. -- Pam Houston * author of Contents May Have Shifted * A splendid debutsmart, funny, refreshing. I read it with delight. -- Lynn Freed * author of The Last Laugh and The Romance of Elsewhere *
