In the stories of This Impossible Vertical World, characters struggle to hold fast to other lives—human and animal—as the familiar deserts them. In threatened geographies, from New Mexico and Alaska to Utah and Minnesota, these hard-tested people discover a bestiary of relations: dogs, coyotes, rattlers, whales, swans, wolves, bears, loons, and turtles. This is an ark of stories, its passengers hoping events flooding their lives will recede on a more habitable vertical world.

Praise for This Impossible Vertical World

“This Impossible Vertical World is a charming, absorbing, impressively crafted collection of stories about love, friendship, and family. Nature dominates, and his misfit characters are often fonder of animals than humans, sometimes secluding themselves in open prairies and deep woods and foggy marshes, where they feel what to do more than they know what to say.”

—Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal, Red Moon, Thrill Me, and Refresh, Refresh

“Wild dogs. Wolves. Polar bears. Elk. Snakes, turtles, lizards. An injured trumpeter swan. Characters taken to the limits of their patience, passion, and understanding while their lives unfold in ways they never imagined. Ordinary people coping with heartbreaking and heart-stopping situations. How well do we know ourselves…and others? these lyrical and lively stories ask us. Think: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with master storyteller Steve Pett standing in for Marlin Perkins.”

—Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots and Help Wanted: Female

“Stephen Pett writing these searching simmering stories of This Impossible Vertical World may very well be the John Ford of American short prose fiction. Yes, these stories cross off the axes of specific places and sweeping vistas, moving relentlessly from humid east to dry land west, from frigid north to arid south. Pett is adept at that Fordian combination—the intimate gesture foiled by the majestic backdrop—the loveseat glider on a porch overlooking the ancient erosions of Monument Valley. The stories of This Impossible Vertical World careen through all these dimensions, reaching terminal velocities and animating the event horizons found in the selvage of pinpricks printed on the pinpricked heart.”

—Michael Martone author of Table Talk & Second Thoughts and Plain Air

“The all-too-human characters of Stephen Pett’s new collection grapple with truth and lies, need and want, while traversing big landscapes that beckon and tantalize. Central to the stories are fateful encounters with animals, who sometimes appear as harbingers of change or agents of redemption, but always rendered so real they seem to howl and squawk and sing from the pages. Tender and unflinching, This Impossible Vertical World suggests that if there’s anything of solace or salvation in this world, it’s to be found in wildness.”

—Melissa L. Sevigny, author of Brave the Wild River

“Jeweled through and through with intimacies that carry the reader deep into emotional interiors of kinship, these eleven gorgeous stories chronicle the interactions of joy and heartbreak that highlight our ‘impossible’ vertical state as humans that too often separates us from our vertebrate and tetrapod relatives. The challenge these stories present is how ‘to be an animal and a human, too.’ Chock full of interactions with all kinds of critters—dogs, coyotes, a South African puff adder, a trumpeter swan, and a painted turtle, to name a few—these visitations demonstrate the vast power and intelligence of the more-than-human creatures with whom we share the planet.”

—Debra Marquart, author of The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere

“Stephen Pett writes dogs like Tom McGuane, searchers like Richard Ford, and sad magic like Denis Johnson. His characters inhabit and haunt the hot and cold America—the windy, barbed, and salted places where Pett’s vantage on the world is in turn seasoned and wild. I’ve been a fan since Sirens, and This Impossible Vertical World proves Stephen Pett’s getting better with age. This collection is a jackpot.”

—Jon Billman, author of The Cold Vanish