In the utterly remarkable debut collection, This is Not the Tropics, Ladette Randolph, in her fifteen hypnotic tales, offers up a clear-eyed, captivating portrait of the Plains marked by heartache, fear, loneliness and regret. A resigned housewife trapped in a loveless marriage, on the verge of fleeing town with a reliable, good-hearted married man, finds her best-laid plans unravel when her husband unexpectedly dies in “Billy”. In the poignant, unnerving, “Hyacinths”, an unsettling, unexpected pregnancy and the possibility of a church group’s dubious intervention, causes a once cheerful mother to become an agent of order, rebelling against the hypocrisy of a town “fossilized in the past”. A college student tasked with house-sitting her eccentric professor’s home replete with pornographic art and mass-murderer coffee table books and his two melodramatic, lovesick dogs to her friends’ mockery and chagrin ironically discovers that her seemingly normal friendships are more horrific and fake than the home which is pure, without pretense in the collection’s gem, “The Girls”. In a small Nebraska town, homegrown men rally for the annual “queen contest” serves as the hilarious backdrop for a daughter facing anxiety over her families’ reaction to her upcoming nuptials to a black man, but in the end, finds herself surprised by her capacity to underestimate the ones she loves in “Miss Kielbasa”. In these elegant tales, Randolph eschews Middle America stereotypes to reveal vivid, complex characters, compromised in love, family and society, battling tradition amidst reality to render these prairie city inhabitants with inexorable heart, compassion and truth. Quite honestly, this is the finest collection I’ve seen in years. Certainly, one could compare Miss Randolph’s stories to Flannery O’Connor mixed with a little Lorrie Moore & Alice Munro. Her stories aren’t flashy, over-indulgent, rather they are quiet and subtle and completely heartbreaking. These are normal people living normal lives and somehow, Randolph makes them extraordinary, memorable people.