The New Salvation and Other Stories (Forthcoming January 2025) New Blurbs

Daren Dean’ The New Salvation and Other Stories has more bangers in it than an AR clip. Dean’s tightly spun tales are a kaleidoscope’s view into the full range of human emotion, with characters that step off the page, kick your door down, grab you by the collar, and demand your full attention. Some will make you laugh; others will gut punch you, and a few will leave you in tears. Dean is simply a masterful, gritty, storyteller, with a voice that vibrates in your head in the best possible way long after you put the book down.

-JD Clapp, Author of A Good Man Goes South: Stories and Poachers and Pills (forthcoming, 2025)

Devoted readers of Daren Dean—of whom I am one—will be delighted by The New Salvation. Dean writes prose that isn’t afraid to show off its calluses. His sentences still land like gut-punches, even as they--in the indelible words of one of his narrators--”reach up to the moon like savage prayers.” But The New Salvation also proves that Dean has considerably more stylistic muscles to flex, as he weaves thrilling elements of sci-fi, Southern Gothic, and madcap farce into his trademark dirty realism. The New Salvation is a captivating performance by a Missoura maestro.

- John Waddy Bullion, author of This World Will Never Run Out of Strangers:Stories.

Devoted readers of Daren Dean—of whom I am one—will be delighted by The New Salvation. Dean writes prose that isn’t afraid to show off its calluses. His sentences still land like gut-punches, even as they--in the indelible words of one of his narrators--”reach up to the moon like savage prayers.” But The New Salvation also proves that Dean has considerably more stylistic muscles to flex, as he weaves thrilling elements of sci-fi, Southern Gothic, and madcap farce into his trademark dirty realism. The New Salvation is a captivating performance by a Missoura maestro. - John Waddy Bullion, author of This World Will Never Run Out of Strangers:Stories.