Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Working Lives) - Softcover

Order Up! Schumejda throws an apron at you & before you can even get it tied she pulls you into the elaborate world of the Dead End Diner. Through exquisite storytelling rich with magnificent metaphor & razor-sharp insight you will work with & wait on a brilliant cast of characters & like any job, you'll love some & hate some - you'll lose some & win some. Poverty, abuse, abortion & racism, among other controversial topics, sizzle red-hot on grill while you wait on drunk college kids, dig through garbage cans looking for a lost set of dentures & talk about the strangest tip you have ever gotten. When your shift ends, you won't walk away with an empty plate, your heart will be full of love for that perfect imperfection that you are served with any family, whether it's blood or ketchup pumping through your veins. There should be a display of these books on every counter at every diner across America! - Amanda Oaks

-Amanda Oaks, Wordsdance

A Book of Poems that Reads Like a Novel...

With a spot-on ear for dialogue and a solid feel for gestural nuance, Rebecca Schumejda sweeps us swiftly into the late-night chatter and dish clanking of the Dead End Diner. In this collection, we meet a memorable cast of prickly though resilient characters who simultaneously shrink and expand under the high-pressure cooker of life. Cinematic in its conception, I can't help but think of Robert Altman's Short Cuts, or some of Raymond Carver's best for that matter. Waiting at the Dead End Diner is a deft exploration of the complicated forces embodied in gender, unreciprocated love, ethnic and religious stereotype, and economic class, where participants dream big and live hard in the face of unflinching obstacles. If I could purchase one meal at any hour, it would undoubtedly be Rebecca Schumejda's latest.

--Manuel Paul López, author of The Yearning Feed