Book by DeFrain to be launched at Watermark Books

"Darren DeFrain's "Inside & Out" is a wonderfully companionable book. Its 11 stories are told by a variety of first person narrators who share a keen eye and a caring, critical heart -- a combination that makes for the comic center of the author's voice. As the stories roam from the West to Wisconsin a contemporary America crafted from in its own deceptively colorful, plain -- i.e., economical -- language emerges. It's the style of storyteller, sure enough of his stories to tell them straight, adorned only by epigrammatically tight insight." -- Stuart Dybek, MacArthur Fellow and author of "Childhood and Other Neighborhoods," "The Coast of Chicago," and "I Sailed with Magellan."

"These stories -- dramatic monologues of the highest order -- display a wealth of voices, each acting as a single instrument in the creation of an orchestral version of our American life. DeFrain has listened faithfully to his characters, and they have spoken to and through him with honesty and charm." -- Antonya Nelson, author of five short story collections, including "Some Fun" (Scribner's 2006), "In The Land Of Men," and the novels "Talking in Bed," "Nobody's Girl," and "Living to Tell."

Synopsis
The 11 first-person stories in Darren DeFrain's new collection, "Inside & Out," give us narrators who want desperately to believe that their moral compass points true. A young butcher in Nebraska is stuck at his job while in the town below his girlfriend may be cheating on him. An alcoholic, recently-divorced father from Los Angeles tries to take his young son camping in cold, frozen Michigan. Another reluctantly attends the wedding of his wife's sorority sisters only to find himself marooned at the bachelor party with several of his wife's ex-boyfriends. DeFrain mines the humor in these situations, but within this humor we also find enormous compassion. We genuinely feel for these middle-class, largely Midwestern characters as they struggle to articulate what they want. They are rough around the edges, sure. But we pull for these characters because in spite of every sign that the world conspires against them, they continue to resist romantic failure.