"In the twelve stories collected in Certain American States, Catherine Lacey, the award-winning author of the acclaimed novels Nobody Is Ever Missing and The Answers, picks apart the minutiae of the human condition with the skill of a surgeon, giving life to a collection of ordinary people seeking -- and failing to find -- the extraordinary in their lives. The characters in Certain American States are continually coming to terms with their place in the world before change inevitably returns. A woman leaves her dead husband's clothing on the street, only for it to reappear on the body of a stranger; a man reads his ex-wife's short story and neurotically contemplates whether it is about him; a young woman's attempt to deal with family tragedy is interrupted daily by a mute stranger showing her incoherent messages on his phone. These are stories of breakups, abandonment, and strained family ties; loneliness, happenstance, starting over, and the constant destruction of the self. Catherine Lacey's elegiac and inspired prose is at its full power in Certain American States, her first collection of short fiction, further establishing her as one of the singular literary voices of her generation."--