Forged under fires of dominant Midwestern “family values,” Midwest Secrets offers poems that transgress the cherished spheres of family, faith, work, health, and love. In favor of irreverent bodily sensations once repressed, this collection of midwestern sacrilege exposes narratives once concealed by decades of prayer in a Christian church. These eclectic poems traverse themes of love, dissatisfaction, abandonment, depression, bisexuality, bliss, and apostasy in the context of rural, suburban, and city spaces, leaving readers with an overarching sense of the beautiful suffering and purpose that comes from refusing silence in the face of dogmatism.

Let the Dead Bury the Dead would be the outcome if Jacob Appel met Grant Faulkner for drinks at a meeting for survivors of childhood religious abuse, with Mauve from Karen Russell’s “The Cloud Lake Unicorn” presiding over the meeting. This short story collection immerses readers in stories of surviving religious trauma, bureaucratic living, authentic bisexuality, and desires that deserve affirmation. The glue that binds these stories—many of them, coming of age stories—is a commitment to pressing on (in the Beckettian sense) in daily life amidst discrimination, humiliation, scandal, depression, and the changefulness that accompanies someone committed to growth. From flash fiction vignettes of life to longer stories that take place in the Midwest, Florida, Michigan, and Lebanon, this collection pays homage to those who bravely forsake the comfortable path of religious extremism in favor of a life of little truths, friendship, and exploration.