Love Breaks My Bones and I Laugh

The daughter of the Last American Cowboy is tasked with putting her late-father's ashes to rest, but has plans of her own. A woman wakes up after the first night with her lover to discover she's birthed a pile of maggots. The ghost of Hans Christian Andersen comforts a young girl. These short stories are haunted by the destructive, often cyclically so, power of love and fantasy.

"Fans of Johnson's work, namely her previous collection I'll Tell You a Love Story (Bridge Eight, 2020), might notice an anger in these stories that felt more subdued before. There is a pain that still burns-the hand pressed to the stove, a flash in the sear that has not subsided. A kind of

frenetic energy carries the reader through these pieces"- Kym Cunninham, author of NEW MYTHOLOGIES and DIFFICULTY SWALLOWING