Description

The 3rd Thing, paperback

Publication Date:February25, 2020

Publisher Marketing:It’s California in 1983. A woman pulls an IV out of her arm, walks out of the hospital and starts driving north. She is bleeding and nauseous. There is something in the trunk of her Datsun and it’s rotting. FUGITIVE ASSEMBLAGE is lyric noir pieced together from remnant words and the blind turns of Highway 1. This haunted and haunting novel renders sensation through images and evokes grief in a dis/harmony of ghostly voices conjured from geology texts, poetry, family history, personal trauma and from women’s diaries of the “westward journey.”

“FUGITIVE ASSEMBLAGE is mysterious, restless, searching, flat out beautiful, and finally, heartbreaking. I dont think Ive ever read grief in a way that feels so true. And then there is just this absolute pleasure in the language, the atmosphere, the constant move forward through the Southern California landscape and through history. Joan Didion meets Bhanu Kapil meets the films of Kelly Reichardt. Its like a long, hot day that turns into a harrowing night, and yet at the end, somehow, there is a sense of peace.”Amina Cain

“Tracing and butting up: blood lines, boundary lines, familial lineages, the lines on maps. Calkins reveals the unresolved, the lost, the inaccessible, and the lingering of the fugitive assemblage which is grief and journey and rupture and self. Oh, dear reader, how do I even attempt to describe the breathlessness and devastation felt while navigating this heartbreaking and tender text? FUGITIVE ASSEMBLAGE is piercing and marvelous. Autumn approaches and I sit at my desk alone, weeping.”Janice Lee

“Jennifer Calkins is a scientist /poet / teacher /parent and environmental lawyer. She is also blessed with the wisdom and clarity that depression instills. She paints bleak and beautiful landscapes in our brains with all of the grace and horror of Cormac McCarthy. FUGITIVE ASSEMBLAGE is a road story, a darkly funny odyssey in a Datsun careening thru a desert apocalyptic California haunted by ancestral demons. This is Jennifers best work to date. Get in the Datsun.”Thor Harris