The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You: Stories

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE * A collection of raucous stories that offer a vibrant and true mosaic (The New York Times) of New Orleans, from the critically acclaimed author of We Cast a Shadow

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD * LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR-Garden & Gun, Electric Lit * Every sentence is both something that makes you want to laugh in a gut-wrenching way and threatens to break your heart in a way that you did not anticipate. -Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets, in The Wall Street Journal

Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture.

In Beg Borrow Steal, a boy relishes time spent helping his father find work after coming home from prison; in Ghetto University, a couple struggling financially turns to crime after hitting rock bottom; in Before I Let Go, a woman who’s been in NOLA for generations fights to keep her home; in Fast Hands, Fast Feet, an army vet and a runaway teen find companionship while sleeping under a bridge; in Mercury Forges, a flash fiction piece among several in the collection, a group of men hurriedly make their way to an elderly gentleman’s home, trying to reach him before the water from Hurricane Katrina does; and in the title story, a young man works the street corners of the French Quarter, trying to achieve a freedom not meant for him.

These stories are intimate invitations to hear, witness, and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal, and undeniably New Orleanian, written by a lifelong resident of New Orleans and one of our finest new writers.