Tag Archives: Travelogue

Haunt of Home released fall 2020 in print and audio book

HauntofhomecoverThe Haunt of Home: A Journey Through America’s Heartland, the latest narrative nonfiction from Zachary Michael Jack, is now available from Cornell University Press and Northern Illinois University Press. 

“Whether interviewing an Illinois casket-maker, an Iowa pastry chef, a retired Kansas banker, his farmer father, or just himself, Jack touches on the universal experience of exploring alternatives while understanding ourselves. He suggests we avoid abstract, distant, and often urban agendas, and preserve the home places which ultimately define us.”

David Pichaske, author of Bones of Bricks and Mortar

“This story of fatalism on the prairie is seamlessly grounded in references to American art, literature, and movies and to communal fatalism in classical literature. In this way, Zachary Jack’s experiences become universal, extending far beyond Middle America.”

James Ballowe, author of A Man of Salt and Trees

“Often beautiful and insightful.”

Anna Clark, author of The Poisoned City

“Jack makes a persuasive and elegant argument for the Middle American Gothic, detailed by writers and artists native to the region. Repression, hypocrisy, and empty righteousness play out in the wide-open landscape, pitted against the human inclination for passion. Much of this book rings true.”

Maurice Manning, author of Railsplitter

Native Soulmate named reviewers choice

November’s Small Press Bookwatch named Native Soulmate: A Season in Search of a Love Homegrown a Reviewer’s Choice, calling it a “charming and original read, very much recommended.” The Des Moines Register agrees, praising Zachary Michael Jack’s latest book of creative nonfiction as “a deeply personal and heartfelt journey.”

From the cover:

“At the height of a Heartland summer a seventh generation Midwesterner unlucky in love sets forth from a faraway farm on a quest to road-test what he calls his Beach Boys hypothesis: What if we really do live in a world where native boy meets native girl…What if the cutest boys and girls in the world really do live right under our noses? So begins a Cinderella season in search of a love homegrown. Pursuing the dream wherever it may lead, the author delivers speeches in far-flung farm burgs and readings in well-to-do college towns while setting up listening posts in public libraries and chautauquas in cattle barns. Part 1500-mile travelogue and part real-life love story, Native Soulmate offers not just an account of a magical trek and its uncanny, sweetcorn settings, but a moving argument for how voting with your feet and leading with your heart really can matter.”