DEVOTION

This review was published with Great Lakes Review.

Alpena author, K.J. Stevens, offers his readers intimate glimpses into the lives of characters facing the hardships and fluxes of life in his collection of short stories, DEVOTION, published by Crooked Steeple Press. Released this past year through his own independent company, DEVOTION is Stevens’ eighth book containing ten stand-alone stories that subtly flush out divergent and yet familiar responses to coping with pain, loss and the continuous grit of living that risks grinding us down.

With language peeled-back and chalked in the skeleton of being, piety of living is layered throughout the collection in what pushes through or surfaces after a storm of pain settles. Sometimes the characters do not realize the actuality of a storm or the extent of damage until after it has blown through. Stories of the ordinary, the reader can nudge into these corners of living that many of us face, day in and day out. The loss of children, strained relationships, confronting the reality of our harrowing future selves, or coming upon the moment of the loss of innocence of your children, Stevens pulls us into multi-faceted character lives effortlessly through the fluidity of his writing. DEVOTION is literary, character-driven, yet not bogged down but pulled-back exposing vulnerability and powerful searing moments of epiphany.

DEVOTION is a quick read, but an engagement with the complexity of the human psyche that will carry on after the reading experience. An author previously published with Great Lakes Review, I offer this 76-page collection of short stories for recommendation of reading within our community. Many of the stories in DEVOTION are set in Northeast Michigan.

In an interview with The Alpena News, Stevens’ explains that as a ‘Northern Michigan guy,’ “I appreciate the outdoors, and I think innately we’re connected to nature, and a lot of us lose that with everything that comes with this life we’re living.” His writing reclaims a connection with nature through the references in his stories. “Each story stands alone, yet together they form something deeper — a meditation on what we hold onto, what we let slip away, and the spaces that remain between.” Other books by Stevens include: “Pilgrim’s Bay,” “CUTTING TEETH,” “Infidelity,” “Black,” “dead bunnies,” “A Better Place,” all available on Amazon.

Stevens focusses on short stories playing with personal experience and entering quickly into a fictional world through clean prose. He explains in his interview, “I just figure, why paint a huge, big picture when I can make a little teeny one, and it’s the same message?” He also gives readers agency in taking away from his stories where they can meet the author at in their current states. Further, “I don’t typically describe the people much,” Stevens said. “Let the person put somebody in there … let them figure out what the story is to them. Let them figure out the scene. I just provide the structure.” Like one story that stood out to me, “our summer cottage,” a trekking through of immense violence imperceptibly folded into life, the extent of what a father will do to stand up to an abuser, or the mercy shown through violence of putting a hit deer out of misery. A family waiting at the car and a doe looking on. The layers of violence, a distinct palette we confront in our own lives.

A passage that resonated with me, the moment of realization of the horrors of our lives, and the fact that we have no choice but to carry on stays with me.

“This must be fiction- this loss. And this lack of reality is rooted in all I’ve been taught to believe. There is no magic, no sorcery, no talking with the dead. That’s what the Good Book says. And as far as I can tell, all of this is scripted and proper. We are all, indeed, bitched from the start. And everything, no matter what, gets put where it’s supposed to be.”

Thank you to K.J. Stevens and Crooked Steeple Press for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!