So Much Heart

So Much Heart

WINNER OF THE 2024 SERGIO TRONCOSO AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF FICTION (TEXAS INSTITUTE OF LETTERS)   In a debut collection that is absurd yet grimy, brutal but tender, Drew Buxton announces himself as an audacious, if a bit unstable, new voice in fiction. So Much Heart is full of schemes, addiction, dead bodies, and intrusive thoughts, but somehow through it all runs a thread of deep compassion. With a wicked sense of humor, Buxton steers right into mental illness, masculinity, and American mythology. Long after you turn the final page, this book will leave you buzzing with life-affirming energy or hiding in your bedroom, alone, mumbling to yourself. Either way, you won't forget this collection. "Drew Buxton's debut short story collection exposes the wiry underbelly of things: schemes, addiction, dead bodies, intrusive thoughts, masculinity, American mythology, with a beating heart interested most in affirming the strangeness of this life." ​- NYLON "What makes these stories truly special, what turbocharges them, is their departure from realism into bent and refracted versions of past and future Americas." - Southwest Review "There are a lot of found body parts in Drew Buxton's So Much Heart, but these aren't gruesome tales. Bodies—or just the parts—are handled in the same straightforward manner as the arrival of a pizza and Oreos before bedtime, a high-stakes Pogs game. And when things go full-on surreal, all remains quite normal. In fact, everything is just fine here in So Much Heart. I'm not sure what to call this ultra-realistic surrealism, but I love it and I love these stories." —Mary Miller, author of Biloxi and Always Happy Hour ​ "Buxton's stories read like that shot in Lynch's Blue Velvet where we push past the green grass of Norman Rockwell Americana and see the rotten, cruel underbelly of things. Corpses, recess, cockfights in Vegas—these stories feel like cinema...Funny, unnerving, and gothic, these stories feel like blood relations to Donald Ray Pollock, Amelia Gray, or Stephen King." —Oliver Zarandi, author of Soft Fruit in the Sun "You're the kind of honest that happens when you're lonely. You're late-night driving through Texas with a stranger—a pizza delivery guy for Papa John's. It's humid, unhinged, but hopeful. In So Much Heart, Drew Buxton pulls us close to losers and rejects, and we recognize ourselves. We scratch each other's backs." —Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, author of Sleepovers "So Much Heart drips authenticity with every sentence, in every story, within this high-spirited collection. Drew Buxton somehow manages to take bizarre feelings buried deep inside of us and make them into buoyant tales that we can all relate to on a deeply personal level. He makes the awkward, okay. The odd, feel casual. And erratic human emotions something to be celebrated, not shunned. In short, So Much Heart is the ultimate vibe check for everyone who reads it. Whether you pass is up to you." —Mallory Smart, author of The Only Living Girl In Chicago​ "Drew Buxton's stories are full of cheap beer, dead bodies, failed therapies, and the throes of addiction. But, in all this doubt and darkness, he never fails to show us the humanity at the center. Buxton's stories are relentlessly compelling." —John Dermot Woods. author of The Baltimore Atrocities