Indiana-based author Laura Dzubay’s Pure Fear, American Legend is a fascinating debut collection brimming with stories rooted in the mundane, the extraordinary, and the spaces in between.

Ranging from the unsuccessful love life of a personified dust devil, to a thirteen-year-old’s perspective as she is kidnapped after school by one of her mother’s many eccentric exes, to a small town rattled by the discovery of a cell phone years before its invention, these stories investigate love, nature, and liminality in fresh and dazzlingly unique ways.

Ending with the titular story in which an unprepared girl is compelled to save another from imminent danger only she has noticed, Dzubay’s introspective voice binds Pure Fear, American Legend, leaving readers lingering on the page after each story before turning with excitement to the next.

“Pure Fear is full of beautiful new nightmares: stories of smart young women who find themselves squeezed between terror and uncertainty, death and creeping menace. Missing hands? Check. Unshakeable ghosts? Yes. A monstrous, heartbreaking, not-quite kidnapping? Indeed. Unusually gripping, sharp and scary, this is a wicked, striking debut collection.”

–Michael Byers, author of Percival’s Planet

“Whether writing about heroines who are columns of dust, beloved ghosts, or misguided kidnappers, Laura Dzubay’s tales are of characters with good hearts who navigate personal geographies of hurt amid the real and imagined monsters of this world. A beautiful and lyrical debut.” 

–Alexander Weinstein, author of Universal Love

“Laura Dzubay weaves a tapestry of haunting tales that blur the lines between reality and the supernatural. With razor-sharp prose and richly drawn characters, these stories explore the liminal spaces of adolescence, where terror and wonder collide. An exciting debut collection!”

–Michelle Pretorius, author of The Monster’s Daughter