Hallelujah Station and Other Stories

By: M. Randal O'Wain

Narrated by: Josh Innerst, Shua Potter, Nancy McNulty

Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

M. Randal O’Wain’s debut short story collection, Hallelujah Station and Other Stories, introduces listeners to a wide and diverse cast of characters struggling with and responding to changes and loss. These gritty and poignant stories follow the tragic parts of life, the pieces that may neither start nor end in comfortable resolution and the pieces that make up complex realities.

In the first story, a former drug dealer reflects on a life-changing decision he made years ago that ended up hurting the person he most wanted to protect. Later in the collection, we meet a would-be robber who turns out, in strange ways, to be the hero. O’Wain’s characters are often deeply flawed or totally lost, but in each instance, these traits serve to reveal the characters as real, compassionate, and, ultimately, human. Sprinkled with humor and heartache, O’Wain’s stories bring us into contact with the curious, the tragic, and the authentic.

©2020 M. Randal O'Wain (P)2021 Autumn House Press

Critic reviews

“What I admire about the stories in this collection is the way O’Wain writes about love - all kinds of love, between all kinds of people. He knows so much about the wear and tear the heart endures. These tales are riveting, and some of them are dark and sad, but in the end, there’s always a light to follow. O’Wain is an honest writer. He tells the truth.” (Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish)

"Played out across a range of Southern urban settings from Memphis to Asheville, the stories feature a cast of modern misfits encompassing diverse voices.... Queer, Black, adolescent, and disabled characters shine with discomfiting rigor, demanding purpose if not freedom from their circumstances.... From start to finish, the characters of Hallelujah Station and Other Stories grapple with overwhelming circumstances, refusing to let go. Like Jacob with the Angel, some emerge from their struggles victorious, some wandering, and, all of them, changed." (Southern Review of Books)

"The characters in O’Wain’s collection are definitely Americans. Everyone has an angle of some kind.... The characters in the most danger in Hallelujah Station are the ones who don’t know exactly what they need. Many of them are stuck in a bad spot." (Pittsburgh Quarterly)