Leave-Takers

Steven Wingate is the author of several books, including Of Fathers and Fire (Nebraska, 2019), the award-winning Wifeshopping, and Thirty-One Octets: Incantations and Meditations. He is an associate professor of English at South Dakota State University. For more information about the author, visit stevenwingate.com/about.

“The Leave-Takers fairly crackles with prose that strings sharp notes and breathtaking lyricism into a finely wrought tale of family struggle for survival on a hard land. These characters take no prisoners, give as good as they get, and never let go of the reader’s emotions or each other. Wingate has written a love song to the Dakota plains and every dream you ever had and lost and rebuilt again and again. A novel that demands to be read and savored many times over!”-Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise “It is difficult to write a contemporary novel that offers hope while avoiding sentimentality. Steven Wingate’s raw and compassionate The Leave-Takers does precisely this. It is a novel that explores how, amid so many blunting forces of violence and despair, we might stay sensitive to life and open to the future. The novel shimmers with the regenerative possibilities of family and creativity. This is a novel about woundedness but also about the rituals that allow us to free ourselves from the past and find home and healing right where we are.”-Kent Meyers, author of The Work of Wolves “Steven Wingate gives us beautifully rendered landscapes, at once expansive and intimate, filled with lively, compelling characters-both alive and dead!-upended by the twists and turns of life. A great ride through the terrain of loss, desire, and unbreakable connection.”-Paula Saunders, author of The Distance Home “Set against the vast, intimidating landscape of South Dakota, The Leave-Takers is a harrowing romance, a powerful story about addiction, perseverance, and ultimately the redemptive, complicated, and fraught power of love.”-Chip Cheek, author of Cape May