A spectacularly inventive debut novel that reinvents the tall tale for our times. “Cuyahoga defies all modest description…[it] is ten feet tall if it’s an inch, and it’s a ramshackle joy from start to finish”—Brian Phillips, author of Impossible Owls
CUYAHOGA
by Pete Beatty
Scribner, October 2020
Big Son is what you call a spirit of the times—the times being 1837. Behind his broad shoulders, shining hair, and chuch-organ laugh, Big Son practically made Ohio City all by himself. The feats of this frontier superhero have earned him wonder and whiskey toasts but very little in the way of government dollars. And without money, Big cannot become an honest husband to his beloved Cloe (who might not want to be his honest wife). In pursuit of a steady wage, our hero hits the (dirt) streets of Ohio City and Cleveland. These two cities are locked in a fierce fight to become the first great metropolis of the West. Their rivalry has come to a boil over the building of a bridge across the Cuyahoga River – and Big stumbles right into the kettle. The ensuing misadventure involves elderly terrorists, infrastructure collapse, steamboat races, dental hygiene, wild pigs and several ruined weddings.
Narrating this picaresque is Medium Son, Meed to acquaintances – apprentice coffin maker, almanac author, orphan, and the younger brother of Big. Meed finds himself swept into the tumultuous events too, and he is forced to choose between brotherly love and his own shadowed sense of self. His uncanny voice—plain but profound, colloquial but surprisingly poetic—elevates a slapstick frontier tale into a screwball origin myth for the Rust Belt by evoking the Greek classics, mining the best of recent lit’s vernacular-ized canon, from Lincoln in the Bardo, The Sisters Brothers, The Luminaries, or a Coen brothers prologue, and the adventures of Charles Portis.
Pete Beatty has worked at the University of Chicago Press, Bloomsbury, and many other places, including a driving range behind a Dairy Queen. He has taught at Kent State University and the University of Alabama. His writing has appeared in Vulture, Vice Sports, GQ.com, Deadspin, Baseball Prospectus, Belt Magazine, Cleveland Scene, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. CUYAHOGA is his first book. He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama with his wife and their two cats.
Originally published before the war in 1938 and the full revelations of the Third Reich’s persecution of Jews and other civilians, the book offers a fascinating look at life during this period and the moral challenges people faced under Nazism. It is also a taut, gripping, page-turner of the first order. Written in the form of a suspense novel, 
Also Available: Robin Talley’s upcoming novel, MUSIC FROM ANOTHER WORLD, will be published by Inkyard Press on March 31st, 2020. Set in the 1970s to a soundtrack of Bowie, Blondie and a whole lot of Patti Smith, two teenage girls’ worlds converge in ways they could never have imagined. With a fierce sense of rebellion and a feminist attitude to boot, they soon discover what it means to be their true selves, and one thing’s for sure: they’re both sick of blending in.
As birthdays go, this year’s birthday for radio producer Everly Dean hit an all-time low. Worse than the birthday she had a tonsillectomy. Worse than the birthday her loveably reckless parents decided to split up (the first time). But catching your boyfriend cheating on you with his assistant? Yea, even clichés sting. But no matter. This is Everly Dean’s year! The year she doesn’t let her anxiety hold her back. The year she stops being the hot potato in the overblown drama of her parent’s marriage. The year she pitches her podcast idea to her boss. There’s just one problem. Her boss, Chris, is way too cute. He’s also supremely respectful of her, to the point of being distant (which means he hates her, right? Or is that the anxiety talking)? Oh, and Stacey, best friend/ DJ, forgot to mute the mic as Everly ranted about Simon the Snake (syn: see Cheating Ex). Maybe she has three problems. Suddenly, people are lining up to date her, Bachelor-style; fans are voting for their favorite dates (Note to self: never leave house again); and meanwhile, that spark she feels for Chris might be a two-way street. It’s a lot to handle for a woman who considers avoiding people an Olympic sport. She’s going to have to fake it ‘till she makes it to get through all of this. Perhaps she’ll make a list of three (that’s barely a list)… Five (no one likes an odd number)… Ten rules for faking it. Because sometimes making the rules can find you happiness when you least expect it.
Last year, Alina Kane was a ballet dancer who was accepted into one of the country’s top programs on a professional track. Then, she shattered her leg. This year, Alina has two metal plates holding her bones together, exactly one friend, and zero chance of a ballet career. She is an aimless high school junior who got roped into doing the spring musical because her previous coping mechanisms (namely laying in bed eating Cool Ranch Doritos while watching contraband ballet videos) were ‘depressing everyone around her.’ And when she is cast in a sexy role opposite Jude, the (charmingly? annoyingly?) laidback lead, it seems she must transform from a ballet swan into someone else entirely. As she starts to get used to her new normal, Alina begins to re-examine her broken dream. Maybe ballet wasn’t the beautiful thing she always thought it was. Maybe it didn’t give half-Japanese girls like her the same chances it gave to white girls. Maybe it made her afraid to speak up. The problem is, Alina still loves ballet. But now she wonders if it’s stupid to love something she can’t do anymore. If it’s wrong to love something that’s so flawed. And if it’s bad to fall in love with someone when her heart was just broken, along with her leg.