Praise for SONGS FOR THE DEAF

Songs for the Deaf is a joyful, deranged, endlessly surprising book of stories that defy easy categorization, in addition to the laws of physics (girls “ride air,” aliens plummet from the sky, a basketball-messiah shoots hoops). Fleming's prose is glorious music; his rhythms will get into your bloodstream, and his images will sink into your dreams. Thank you, Burrow Press, for bringing John Fleming's radioactively imaginative stories to us.

~Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove

The range of characters and their concerns is matched by the tonal range, which shifts with aplomb from a certain canny comic zing to simple old sincerity. These stories somehow stay firmly on their tracks through wonderful narrative hairpin turns, the sentences sure in their gait, the language neither timid nor showy, and as with most satisfying stories, it’s hard to tell whether the characters have guided themselves to the serendipitous endings they find, or whether they’ ve been secretly dragged there by the superb skill of the storyteller.

~John Brandon, author of A Million Heavens and Citrus County

All music worth playing is worth playing loud, and the volume on Songs for the Deaf should be turned all the way up. John Henry Fleming riffs on renegade cloud readers, drifters seeking out their long-lost midwives, and random floating girls. In one sublime lick he intones a high-school basketball game as the Lord’s Prayer. I’ ve long admired his work, and this new collection—perfectly in touch with our fantastic times—is well worth blowing out a speaker or two.

~Jeff Parker, author of Ovenman and The Taste of Penny