Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country and Other Stories

This collection is pure Midwest Gothic through and through. I especially loved the stories "Zombie" and "Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street." Each of the stories is unapologetically queer and the collection as a whole deals with familiar ideas and themes of the Midwest (isolation, class disparity, incarceration, limited opportunities leading young men into the military, coming home, being an outsider, etc) in fresh, occasionally heartrending ways.

I often have trouble with short story collections - I rarely connect evenly with all the stories equally; they can feel uneven. I had the same issue here. Some of the stories just didn't grab me, but overall the collection really worked for me.