Nice plot, character development, and world building.

John Darnelle does it again. A book about fields, farmhouses, and life on the Plains. Also a story about family, loss, grief and struggling to come to terms with all of it. All told through a loose mystery. It does all come together in the end. Not quite the impact of Wolf in White Van, but it'll make you think just like that book did.

I'd call it linked vignettes rather than short stories. Hits you fast and hard with its disturbing look at growing in a dirt poor Appalachia mining town. Drugs, sexual confusion, psychosis, rape. All this can be offensive at times, especially with respect to how women and girls are treated, but that may be the point. Despite all this, the stories stay with you.