Introducing: Strays Like Us
A collection of ten standalone short stories exploring what it means to grow up in America.
Books
A collection of ten standalone short stories exploring what it means to grow up in America.
About Strays Like Us
- Short Story Collection / Literary Fiction / Realistic Fiction / Contemporary Fiction
From point of view to subject matter to setting, there’s a wide, wide degree of variance from one story in Strays Like Us to another. Some stories are dark. Others less so.
Some are more experimental while others follow a more traditional format.
Some, you’ll find, are set on the West Coast and span 50 pages. Others take place on the East Coast and span three.
The connective tissue that exists between the ten stories, then, is that each examines in one way or another what it means to be a kid in America. How one processes their experiences. The forces one finds themselves up against. What role “the uncontrollable” plays in all of it—our parents, our birthplaces—and not only how it is one goes about acquiring power and control, but what they do when they have it.
Praise for Garrett Francis and Strays Like Us
"A significant talent, fearless, natural, and hard to classify." - David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl
"A power house of a fiction writer. Poetic and raw, imaginative and real, Garrett is blessed with a literary talent that many can only dream of.” -Claudia Befu, Story Voyager
"One of the author’s greatest strengths is in writing characters that are truly complex. He never does exactly what you’d expect, and for me, that’s what makes them so human and Francis so good at what he does." -Amazon Reader
"Garrett Francis' fiction isn't only immersive, but is also tremendously cinematic. You literally feel yourself in a spectacular movie." -Nadia Gerassimenko, when hope writes
"When you're looking for something that has a bite." -Ben Woestenburg, The Scribbler
"Excellent fiction writing. Powerful, descriptive, and riveting." -Scott Weinzirl
Shades of
If you enjoyed any of the following titles, chances are you’ll enjoy Strays Like Us too:
- This is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks (2011; book)
- Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson (2015; book)
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (1981; book)
Other influences for this project include: the short works of Karen Russell, Jim Harrison, Alice Walker, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Colum McCann.
Read Strays Like Us
Strays Like Us is available to read right now, on this very website. Visit the table of contents to get started.
Get the eBook and/or Paperback
Strays Like Us will also available as an eBook and/or paperback at a later date. Check back soon for more information.
Order Strays Like Us for Your Book Club
If you're part of a book club that wants to read Strays Like Us, send me an email and I'll be thrilled to offer your club a group discount.
Two Fun Facts About Strays Like Us
- The first drafts of the stories within Strays Like Us date back to 2009, when I was a sophomore in college. They’ve been sculpted over dozens of drafts in the decades since.
- Strays Like Us was represented alongside And in the Dark They Are Born from 2014 to 2016 by an agent who one day up-and-quit. I’m not sure how many editors this agent approached, but one rejection they shared with me that I’ve hung onto is from an editor at Knopf: “And although the stories in STRAYS LIKE US worked in such a different, quotidian vein, they were very much of a piece with what I feel is Mr. [Francis’s] core set of concerns in his fiction—a sign of a sophisticated mind and style to be sure.”