Kicking In

Advance Praise for Kicking In <br> This is what Richard Wirick does: With his acute observational powers, he focuses your attention on detail so finely drawn that you start to believe that anything, from the gruesome to the mundane, when viewed at this scale, can be beautiful. You his relish his sentences so much that it takes a while to realize that they are going to break your heart. --Charles Yu, author of Third Class Superhero <br> Wirick's stories are powerful, evocative tales rife with dark beauty. His characters, whether at work or at war, or just making it on the jagged margins of society, jump off the page and into your head and stay there long after you put this book aside. This is high-octane stuff, and a rare beast in today's fiction--work that is well crafted yet full of heart. These are the kind of stories you will find yourself going back to over the years. --Thomas Kelly, author of Empire Rising <br> A book of distilled, brutal beauty, written with cold-eyed fierceness. --Nick Flynn <br> Fair warning, citizens: Rick Wirick refuses to play nice. His is an imagined real world where the gloves are off, the body armor essential, and the prose locked and loaded. Here, love doesn't occasion transcendence. Not even close. Family, faith, friendship--all are but grist for the Great Doodah specializing in woe and cross-heartedness. Kicking In imperils your vital lies, your wishful thinking, and your willful self-delusion. Cover your ya-yas, people. You'll need 'em in the next life. --Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once <br> Some of Wirick's characters find themselves, as one puts it, in 'the kind of place where people only end up.' Wirick captures the hapless, the trapped, the desperate watchers in this world. Each story accrues power as it reveals knife-sharp truths about ourselves: our guilt, responsibility, and self-justification. And though one narrator speaks of 'little points of desperation, ' these stories arem