On Sale January 4, 2022
The Tenderest of Strings is a riveting, full-hearted story of what it takes to survive as a family in a small Western town that beckons from afar but will put its newcomers to the test of their lives.
“The characters in The Tenderest of Strings are as vivid and real as people we know in life . . . and just as captivating and mysterious. I was enthralled.”
About the Author
Steven Schwartz grew up outside Chester, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Colorado for the past thirty-five years. He is the author of four story collections, Little Raw Souls (Autumn House), To Leningrad in Winter (University of Missouri), Lives of the Fathers (University of Illinois), Madagascar: New and Selected Stories (Engine Books), and two novels, Therapy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and A Good Doctor’s Son (William Morrow). His fiction has received the Nelson Algren Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the Cohen Award, the Colorado Book Award for the Novel, two O. Henry Prize Story Awards, the Foreword Review Gold Medal for Short Stories, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Bread Loaf.
“A collection to be held up as evidence that the short story not only endures but also flourishes.” —Booklist, starred review
“Schwartz is a master craftsman...Each story is a blazing forge.” —Billings Gazette
"a stunning story of loss and gradual redemption...a moral lesson for the end of the 20th century.” —The Arizona Daily Star
"These eight stories reveal Schwartz’s remarkable ability to create a range of very believable characters" —Publishers Weekly
"Makes you hope your bus ride is extra-long so you can sit there and read it...your life temporarily given over to these wonderful characters.” —Los Angeles Times
“Steven Schwartz’s masterly Lives of the Fathers mines our deepest feelings toward parents, time, memory, and forgiveness.” —Chicago Tribune