Ben Tanzer's collection of short stories, Upstate, starts like a John Cougar Mellencamp album — familiar places and folks living lives like people you may know or imagine knowing. As the good and not-so-good people of Two Rivers stories entwine, there is a growing undercurrent of the unraveling to come. 

What I love about Tanzer's stories is where you are left when they end. Abruptly. Single moments of lives spun up from the ether of the storm we are all dreaming together but whose taste lingers only on our tongues. With Upstate, Tanzer gives us the little pink houses instead of the empty town of a Hopper painting. We get the feeling of Two Rivers through it's inhabitants lives, not the veneer or the version they want you to see.