As a young man, David Rhodes worked in fields, hospitals, and factories across Iowa. After receiving an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he published three acclaimed novels: The Last Fair Deal Going Down (1972), The Easter House (1974), and Rock Island Line (1975). In 1976, a motorcycle accident left him partially paralyzed. In 2008, Rhodes returned to the literary scene with Driftless, a novel that was hailed as "the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years" (Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune). A Guggenheim Fellow, Rhodes lives with his wife, Edna, in Wisconsin.

“A fast-moving story about small town life with characters that seem to have walked off the pages of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology.”—The Wall Street Journal The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years, David Rhodes offers a vivid and unforgettable look at life in small-town America. “[Rhodes’s] finest work yet . . . Driftless is the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”—Chicago Tribune “Set in a rural Wisconsin town, the book presents a series of portraits that resemble Edgar Lee Masters’s ‘Spoon River Anthology’ in their vividness and in the cumulative picture they create of village life.”—The New Yorker “Encompassing and incisive, comedic and profound, Driftless is a radiant novel of community and courage.”—Booklist (starred review) “A welcome antidote to overheated urban fiction . . . A quiet novel of depth and simplicity.”—Kirkus Reviews “It takes a while for all these stories to kick in, but once they do, Rhodes shows he still knows how to keep readers riveted. Add a blizzard, a marauding cougar and some rabble-rousing militiamen, and the result is a novel that is as affecting as it is pleasantly overstuffed.”—Publishers Weekly

From the acclaimed author of Driftless, “a novel of forgiveness, a generous ode to the spirit’s indefatigable longing for love” (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When David Rhodes burst onto the American literary scene in the 1970s, he was hailed as “a brilliant visionary” (John Gardner) and compared to Sherwood Anderson and Marilynne Robinson. In Driftless, his “most accomplished work yet” (Joseph Kanon), Rhodes brought Words, WI, to life in a way that resonated with readers across the country. Now with Jewelweed, this beloved author returns to the same out-of-the-way hamlet and introduces a cast of characters who all find themselves charged with overcoming the burdens left by the past, sometimes with the help of peach preserves or pie. After serving time for a dubious conviction, Blake Bookchester is paroled and returns home. The story of Blake’s hometown is one of challenge, change, and redemption, of outsiders and of limitations, and simultaneously one of supernatural happenings and of great love. Each of Rhodes’s characters—flawed, deeply human, and ultimately universal—approach the future with a combination of hope and trepidation, increasingly mindful of the importance of community to their individual lives. Rich with a sense of empathy and wonder, Jewelweed offers a vision in which the ordinary becomes mythical. “I liked Driftless, but his emotionally rich new novel, Jewelweed, a sequel of sorts, is even better. The novel emits frequent solar flares of surprise and wonder.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer “[A] rhapsodic, many-faceted novel of profound dilemmas, survival, and gratitude . . . [a] refulgent hymn to the earth, ‘psychic strength,’ hard work, integrity, and love.”—Booklist (starred review)

"A complete tour through the development and production of the hit animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall, this volume contains hundreds of pieces of concept art and sketches"--

Church Beyond Walls tells inspiring, informative and occasionally funny stories of how a group of people took Christian spirituality outside of church buildings to engage a world increasingly uninterested in religion, God and faith. From imaginative and wide-ranging experiments, it draws out principles to inspire local churches to express their faith in their communities, and it shares liturgical and other resources developed for these occasions. Based in Brighton and known as BEYOND, for over ten years this group of dreamers, artists and provocateurs have experimented with public art, created light shows and walking meditations, partnered with retailers to create spiritual shop window trails, celebrated the festivals of the church in secular spaces, used folk traditions and more to introduce people to the Christian faith. Their goal and the aim of this book is to help local churches create opportunities for epiphanies: moments when the divine can break into human experience.

"Survival has been the Sledge way since Reuben's father first moved to Des Moines. Yet the family seems cursed, and one by one, they are slipping away. First Reuben's oldest brother is hanged for the murder of his wife. Then another brother is committed to the asylum for spying on the woman he loves. But it's the rape and disgrace of his beloved sister Nellie that drives Reuben into a despair so deep that he sets himself in opposition to the people of Des Moines. Into the depths of this depression wanders Tabor, lovely and vulnerable, who revives Reuben and sets him alive with the promise of her love. Beneath it all hangs the City, "not a city like Des Moines itself, but an inner City of Des Moines . . . or a lower City. No one has ever gotten out of the City." The City has claimed each of his dead relatives, and when Reuben learns that Tabor has descended into the City, he determines, in a moment of panic, to enter himself and bring her out. Thus begins the novel's second act, a harrowing journey through the horrors of the City and among its inhabitants, a ghastly assemblage of dwellers who've crafted new lives for themselves in the underworld." --Publisher.

José Parlá (born 1973) derives his art from the accretions and damage of city walls, and the record they supply of neighborhood character and local history. To these collectively authored public surfaces, Parlá brings a consciousness of art history, and the transformations of graffiti traditions dating back to ancient Rome by painters such as Twombly, Basquiat and Kiefer. His mixed media works sometimes employ fresco techniques and include acrylic, oil paints, plaster, posters used as collage, homemade inks and enamel spray paint. Parlá's archeological works celebrate the chronicles of the urban fabric as a diary: he writes, "as my works evolved, be it paintings, signatures, or even the documentation of these early ephemeral artworks throughout city walls, the works took on the nature of personal journals based on empirical experiences." This volume surveys his two-decade oeuvre.