#4: A POET OF THE MIDWEST. There is just way too much fiction out there.

Not just too much of it at the Barn: too much of it in existence. And the indiscriminate sludge-chute of American publishing obscures some really good authors, like Jonis Agee, whose novels Sweet Eyes and Strange Angels, both set in the American Midwest, are not only passionate and clean-seeing books about farm community life, but manage to avoid being either one of those teacup-and-potpourri “village” novels English authors write in their sleep or one of those baths of magnolia surrealism and baroque hoo-hoo that creep up so frequently from the American south. Agee, Nebraskan by birth, never gives the feeling of axes grinding: she’s not just moving, she’s believable. And these are just her first two…..