Review: Heartbroke by Chelsea Bieker

Heartbroke by Chelsea Bieker

Blurb from Goodreads:

From the acclaimed author of Godshot and “a pitch-perfect ventriloquist of extraordinary talent and ferocity” (T Kira Madden) comes a defining book of stories set in California’s Central Valley, where everyone is seeking or sabotaging love under an unrelenting sun.

United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California’s Central Valley, the characters of Heartbroke boil with reckless desire. A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to salvage her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game with destiny.

Heartbroke brims over with each character’s attempt to salvage—or sabotage—grace where they can find it. Told in bright, snapping prose that reveals a world of loss and love underneath, Chelsea Bieker brilliantly illuminates a golden yet gothic world of longing and abandonment under an unrelenting California sun.

My Review:
Chelsea Bieker wrote one of my favorite books of the last five years so I was incredibly excited for her first collection of stories.  It did not disappoint! Although I don't usually gravitate to short story collections as a rule, I am reading more and more collections that are so beautiful, including this one. There were the same themes of the hard-scrabble, dying American West and, particularly, growing up and living in California's Central Valley . . . and all of those stories felt connected, often involving characters referenced in other stories.  My favorite stories from this collection were Heartbroke, Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Miners, Raisin Man, and Cadillac Flats but the entire collection is worth buying and reading.

Heartbroke comes out next week on April 5, 2022, and you can purchase HERE!  I also loved this author's debut novel and reviewed it HERE.

You were looking at that boy. I knew for certain then what I'd always wondered. I knew then it was true. 

I cried in the car watching you because I realized my heart wanted something unthinkable, a world where you could just be yourself, and I wasn't sure where that idea was coming from as I had never known such a world. My heart just wanted this for you.