Train Shots: stories - Softcover

“Train Shots is more than a promising first collection by a formidably talented writer; it is a haunting story collection of the first order. I was flat knocked out. Blakeslee’s range and confidence are astonishing.” –John Dufresne, author of No Regrets, Coyote  

“Train Shots announces an outstanding new voice. Vanessa Blakeslee’s stories traverse a trilling range of landscapes and voices, but no matter where her characters find themselves, their struggles with lost love and loneliness are authentic and engrossing and will not soon be forgotten.” –Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me

“Blakeslee immerses her readers in nuanced and impressively imagined worlds in which characters must choose between loyalty or justice, between sticking with it or giving up. This is a book populated with unforgettable, complex characters, each seeking, in one way or another, a cure for heartbreak.” –Christine Sneed, author of Little Known Facts

“Train Shots is the literary version of a debutante’s ball, a lovely introduction to a young writer just coming into her own.” –Douglas Glover, author Elle

“The title is a reference to that grand local tradition of liquor consumption anytime a train passes by, most famously at the trackside PR’s Taco Palace in Winter Park... Blakeslee is a talented writer whose book you should pick up even if you’re sober.” –Tod Caviness, for Orlando Sentinel

“Blakeslee’s stories are like dramatic snapshots, each one a colorful glimpse of our sordid and vibrant humanity. Compelling, and honest, Train Shots deserves a prominent spot on the contemporary reader’s bookshelf.” –Lauren O’Regan, Women’s Book Review

“Blakeslee’s ... ambition pokes through again and again in beautiful sentences and her unique insight.” –Denton Loving, for PANK

IPPY Gold Medal Winner (short story collections) 
Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Long List
Sherwood Anderson Award Finalist

A single mother rents a fundamentalist preacher's carriage house. A pop star contemplates suicide in the hotel where Janis Joplin died. A philandering ex-pat doctor gets hooked on morphine while reeling from his wife's death. And in the title story, a train engineer, after running over a young girl on his tracks, grapples with the pervasive question-what propels a life toward such a disastrous end?

Rendered in a style both generous and intelligent, the men and women at the center of these subtle stories are driven by their unusual predicaments and preoccupations. Rife with dark humor, Blakeslee's snapshots illuminate the idiosyncratic and the mundane in energetic, bristling prose that marks the arrival of a powerful new voice. Stories from this collection first appeared in The Southern Review, Green Mountains Review, Harpur Palate, Cimarron Review, The Madison Review, Going Down Swinging, and Skidrow Penthouse, among other publications.