Originally published: Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2004.

Debra Monroe is the author of four books of fiction, and one memoir. Her first book, "The Source of Trouble, " published in 1990, won the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Fiction, and was acclaimed as a "fierce debut" that presents "ever-hopeful lost souls with engaging humor and sympathy" "(Kirkus Reviews)." Her second book of stories, "A Wild, Cold State, " published in 1995, was described by "The Boston Globe" as "fine and funky, marbled with warmth and romantic confusion, but not a hint of sentimentality." When her first novel, "Newfangled, " was published in 1998, the "Washington Post" called it "rangy, thoughtful, ambitious, and widely, wildly knowledgeable, teasing out the tension between pop culture and private life." Her second novel, "Shambles, " originally published in 2004 by SMU Press, was praised by the "Texas Observer" for "the depth as well as the heartbreaking particularity of the hellholes--real and imagined--that make "Shambles" a novel of graceful ease and substance." "On the Outskirts of Normal: Forging a Family Against the Grain, " was originally published by SMU Press in June 2010, to national acclaim.