July 2024 - Taylor Sloan

I suspect the only thing J.D. Vance and I have in common are that we both grew up in working class families in steel mill towns in the midwest, and we both have grandparents who moved there from Eastern Kentucky after World War 2. That—along with the fact that I hadn’t brought another book to read on my flight home—was enough to convince me to buy his newly-published book Hillbilly Elegy at a magazine stand in the San Francisco Airport.

What I quickly realized after beginning the book was that he and I had a very different understanding of what led his family to leave Appalachia, why it is that so many people there are struggling to get by, and what the value of personal responsibility means in contrast to the issues Appalachians (and all working class people) face in this country.

I’m working on new chapters of The Signal that will be coming out over the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this short story I recently finished.

The song I’ll Follow You Into The Dark by the band Death Cab for Cutie was playing. It had come out when they were teenagers. It was their song. This was the last time they’d hear it together, if she was even really hearing it. He believed that she was, or hoped it at least. Melanie Stephenson was asleep, or unconscious really. Wes Stephenson—her husband of 39 years—knew that it was unconsciousness. Sleep was something you woke up from, and he knew that she would not wake up again.

Month: July 2024

Hillbilly Elegy Is A Terrible Book

Serenity Gardens (A Short Story)

I’m working on new chapters of The Signal that will be coming out over the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this short story I recently finished.