Title: THE SPIRIT IN MY SHOES Author: John Michael Cummings Category: Fiction Pages: 204 Trim: 5.5 x 8.5 ISBN: 978-1-960329-10-3 Format: Trade Paperback Publication Date: November 2023 Description: Featuring twenty-three stories, John Michael Cummings’s debut story collection brims with the vitality and complexity of our shared humanity. In tales that conjure comparisons to John Updike, Raymond Carver, and William Gay, Cummings tells the truth about loneliness, relationships, and the common struggles we all face with prose both precise and vibrant. Cummings’s voice, assured yet questioning, will stay with you long after you’ve finished The Spirit In My Shoes. Blurbs: “In three decades of vibrant and luminous stories set against the backdrop of historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, novelist John Michael Cummings’s debut collection, The Spirit In My Shoes, trains his distinctive eye for moeurs domestique on the community he knows best—and does so with a fierce optimism that captures the abiding promise of the human spirit.” —Jacob M. Appel, author of Einstein’s Beach House “A John Michael Cummings story is like no other. He is an original in his characters, his dramatic situations, and his use of language.” —Walter Cummins, author of Telling Stories: Old & New “With versatility that takes the reader from a headstone maker to an artist who plays with the meaning of black-and-white, Cummings defies us to read any story just once.” —Patty Friedmann, author of Too Jewish and Secondhand For additional information, or to arrange an interview with Jeff Esterholm, contact: Ross Tangedal, Ph.D. Director & Publisher, Cornerstone Press CCC 127 | 1801 Fourth Ave Stevens Point, WI 54481 cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu (715)346-4532 Published by Cornerstone Press. Distributed to the trade by Ingram Lightning Source, a division of Ingram. Please send copies of any review or mention to cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu