"She can get better anywhere, even if it's just in some ugly corner where no one's watching. And she will."

Indiana-based author Laura Dzubay's Pure Fear, American Legend is a fascinating debut collection brimming with stories rooted in the mundane, the extraordinary, and the spaces in between. Ranging from the unsuccessful love life of a personified dust devil, to a thirteen-year-old's perspective as she is kidnapped after school by one of her mother's many eccentric exes, to a small town rattled by the discovery of a cell phone years before its invention, these stories investigate love, nature, and liminality in fresh and dazzlingly unique ways. Ending with the titular story in which an unprepared girl is compelled to save another from imminent danger only she has noticed, Dzubay's introspective voice binds Pure Fear, American Legend, leaving readers lingering on the page after each story before turning with excitement to the next.