"Perfectly Midwestern, perfect portraits of perfectly imperfect people. Like coal that never turns into diamonds, but sparks up just the same."

-Amber Sparks

author of And I Do Not Forgive You

"Sometimes Creek is unlike any collection of stories I've read in a long time. What delights most about these stories is their tough and sweet humanity, stories of people with troubled souls: the grief-stricken, the unmoored. The world of this book is our world, familiar and confounding, seen through a cracked and colorful glass. Endlessly surprising, strange, and satisfying. Steve Fox writes with clarity about his characters and the places they live. He loves them, and so you will remember and hold them dear after you close the book."

-Richard Mirabella

author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest

"Somehow Steve Fox has fused together the gravity, emotion, and darkness of William Gay, Tim O'Brien, and Ron Rash. You fall into these words, are enveloped by these lives, troubled by the uncanny-coming away from this collection moved, haunted, and not quite intact."

-Richard Thomas

author of Spontaneous Human Combustion

"Sometimes Creek is a surefooted debut centered on the myriad tender, complicated ways we connect with one another. Fox carefully tilts the familiar until it shimmers-these are stories of real life in all its strange wonder and quiet magic."

-Kimberly King Parsons

author of Black Light

National Book Award Finalist

"This is astonishingly good storytelling by Steve Fox. With an assured, direct narrative voice and deep understanding of human nature, Fox spins stories with deliciously dark underbellies, stories that leave the reader satisfied and just a touch unsettled. The Midwestern landscape of Fox's imagining is the stubbled field in late November variety, with a twisted, grinning scarecrow at its center. By turns moving and funny and gothic, and always compelling, Sometimes Creek is a collection to savor."

-Kathy Fish

author of Wild Life: Collected Works

"Don't be fooled. Disturbing themes hide behind Midwestern idioms and friendly banter in Steve Fox's arresting Sometimes Creek. With a keen eye to the darker side of human existence, Fox explores the uneasy relationships we have with nature, with pets, with people, with the ones we love. Some of these marvelous stories sparkle with magical realism and others gut punch with frank reality. All together, this is one dazzling collection you'll start to read and won't want to put down."

-Alice Kaltman

author of Almost Deadly, Almost Good and Dawg Towne

"In this heartfelt debut collection, readers immediately know where they are: in Steve Fox's America. Hardscrabble and tender, these seventeen story gems gleam in Midwestern dust. These are tales of joy, loss, winning, losing and persevering; infused with Fox's wry humor at just the right moments. The word that stands out most is serendipity, in a collection that surprises in all the best ways. Guided by Fox's skillful pen, take a journey to serendipity-Sometimes Creek, always memorable."

-Amy Cipolla Barnes

author of Mother Figures, Ambrotypes, and Child Craft