How Are You Going to Save Yourself — J.M. Holmes

An interconnected story collection about four young men struggling to liberate themselves from the burden of being black and male in America-- the arrival of an explosive new voice.

Dub, Rolls, Rye, and Gio, who narrates most of these nine stories, have been friends since childhood, growing up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE YOURSELF covers roughly a decade of these inseparable friends weaving in and out of one another's lives as their futures diverge. Among their differences, Gio's mixed-race identity--with a black father, an NFL player whose injury washed him out, and a white mother--sets him apart from his friends, as does his eventual path to the Ivy League. As these four go from boys to men, they grapple with the newfound power of sex and drugs, with the force of their needs, and at times with the violence of their desires.

In this collection, which can whipsaw, sometimes in an instant, from hilarity to devastation, Holmes brilliantly captures the volatile nature of his characters and how the world they move in can shift dramatically from one moment to the next. It will be a journey for each of them to come to terms with the complexity of his family history.

Touching on issues of sex, race, money, and family, these stories have a potent immediacy. They are at times funny, often uncomfortable, and always gripping. They will get under your skin and stay there. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE YOURSELF represents the emergence of a powerful and necessary new voice in American fiction.