Garden Primitives

Stories that explore the inner landscape of grief and desire, and discover emotional truths along the way.

The moods in Garden Primitives range from still to explosive, the language from poetic and sensual to coarse. What is common among them is a passionate allegiance to both the heart and the intellect.

The cinematic eye of Sosin’s roving narrators leads us through the snowy and suburban decay of a family on a perfect winter night; into the narrow but honest mind of a farmer being bowled over by urban sprawl; on the beach, where a woman’s life becomes hyper-focused on the survival of a turtle nest; around a campfire on a north woods vacation where the gaps between parents and children, friends and lovers widen; and through gardens both vegetable and glassed where the language is as fertile as what grows there. Garden Primitives is a debut to a voice and vision concerned with the Eden in and around us, and with our clumsiness and grace in the face of the unknown.

Publication date: April 1, 2000

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5 x 7.5

Page count: 176 pages

ISBN: 9781566891004

Danielle Sosin received a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in 1999. One of her short stories, “What Mark Couldn’t See,” was read on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Garden Primitives is her first book-length publication. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

“The author’s careful descriptions of the natural world and of realistic psychological states mark the book with a distinctive, memorable style.” 

—Publishers Weekly

“What Sosin does well in her debut collection is to evoke atmosphere, whether she is visiting the borderline between farm fields and urban sprawl in ‘Ice Age’ or dark, smoky barrooms in ‘Mother Superior.’” 

—Library Journal

“Sosin has a gift for the narrative hook.” 

—Kirkus