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"Amy Gustine'sYou Should Pity Us Insteadis a devastating, funny, and astonishingly frank collection of stories. Gustine can be brutally honest about the murky calculations, secret dreams and suppressed malice to which most of us never admit, not even to ourselves."—Karen Russell "You Should Pity Us Insteadis an unbroken spell from first story to last, despite the enormous range of subjects and landscapes, sufferings and joys it explores."—Laura Kasischke "Amy Gustine's stories cross impossible borders both physical and moral: a mother looking for her kidnapped son sneaks into Gaza, an Ellis Island inspector mourning his lost love plays God at the boundary between old world and new. Brave, essential, thrilling, each story inYou Should Pity Us Insteadtakes us to those places we've never dared visit before."—Ben Stroud You Should Pity Us Insteadexplores some of our toughest dilemmas: the cost of Middle East strife at its most intimate level, the likelihood of God considered in day-to-day terms, the moral stakes of family obligations, and the inescapable fact of mortality. Amy Gustine exhibits an extraordinary generosity toward her characters, instilling them with a thriving, vivid presence. Amy Gustine's short fiction has appeared in theKenyon Review,North American Review,Black Warrior Review, the Massachusetts Review, and many other places. She lives in Ohio.