This wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get into the first story - it felt like it was taking too long - and I can tell I’ll feel the same way about the others.

Wow....I have loved Russell Banks books for many years, they are rarely sweetness & light & this is no exception. Personally this book takes place in a fictional northern NY town, but the surrounding areas are real & very well known to me, so that was interesting.

These are short stories which are loosely connected to each other in this small town. And there's reference to Trump & MAGA hats, which may be a turn off to some, one way or the other. But the underlying theme for me was this connection to Trump, he wasn't perfect but yet he was there for them, he was not perfect like many of these characters & that was what they loved about him.

This is in no way a Trump or MAGA book, but it does come up in each story, briefly.

I have to think this is his final book as he did die last year, unless there's book written & yet unpublished.

Definitely dark

This trilogy of stories, all based in one small upstate NY town, features characters that are completely different from each other. The common theme, besides the town, is the mindset and political culture of the town, not stereotypes, but reflective of reality. I come from a similar place also in NY, and I recognize the similarities.

I can’t say that this is an enjoyable book due to the dark themes running through it, but it is thought provoking. It reminded me of works by Shirley Jackson, so if you like this style this is a good book for you.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book, but my opinions are my own.

I'm not familiar with the author and I found these stories just ok. Dark, and depressing, sure.
3 stories in an upstate NY town all with gloomy outcomes.
I wasnt looking for something happy, I was aware what I was getting into but my interest just wasn't peaked reading.
Finished just to know how it ended. Thank you, Netgalley, author (rip), and publisher for the ARC.

Knopf Books provided an early galley for review.

A couple years ago, I read my first book by Banks - The Magic Kingdom. So, when I saw his name along with this striking cover, I was instantly drawn to checking it out. This collection of three stories is the first posthumous release (Banks passed away in 2023).

First is Nowhere Man which tells of Doug Lafleur's growing conflict with businessman Yuri Zingerman. Things really escalate when Doug goes against Yuri's wishes, putting the two men at great odds. The tension turns up to eleven with a rather unexpected ending. For me, it makes a very pointed statement about rash and uncontrolled behaviors.

Next up is Homeschooling where Kenneth and Barbara Odell's involvement with their neighbors results in a very tragic ending. This one leaves the reader with so many unanswered questions regarding the Weber family, which reflects upon the notion that so often today people fail to really get to know others.

And, lastly, Kidnapped is a dark and twisting tale of family and failure, drugs and death. It reminded me of something that would be right at home in a Quentin Tarantino film, though delivered thankfully with less gratuitous violence.

Banks touches upon many topical themes in these stories including privacy, gun ownership, miscommunication and misinterpretations. Any one of the three stories could have been ripped from the headlines of recent years. There is a dark tone to them all; there are no happily ever afters here. Given the dark times of the last decade or so, these tragic tales do not come across as shocking as they could have. And that makes me a bit sad.

With a keen eye for the ordinary, this last book of Russell Banks explores the lives of 3 different families connected only by all living in the same small town and all supporters of Trump. He exposes deadly situations that are only too familiar to Americans the last few decades: guns, bad choices, drugs, child abuse, and perceived birth rights. All three stories are thought-provoking looks at our society and are beautifully written with excellent memorable characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and Alfred A Knopf Publishing for the ARC to read and review.

This book is comprised of three dark short stories/novellas written by the late Russell Banks. He passed away in 2023; a loss to American literature. The stories all take place in Sam Dent, a once bustling, now forgotten, decaying town in upstate New York.

My reaction after reading the first story was “Wow…Just wow.” What a great writer. Banks captures well the struggles of people who feel marginalized, the culture that has made a cult hero out of a con man former entertainer and president of the United States and the hate and vitriol that characterizes our current social/political climate as well as the devastating effects of that vitriol.

While the title American Spirits refers to the brand of cigarettes smoked by some of the characters, it of course is a metaphor for so much more. While reading about the sometimes horrors of everyday life may not be for everyone, I think I may have already found my favorite book of 2024.

Thanks to #netgalley and @aaknopf for the ARC.

Yall. This one was interesting and kept me hooked from page one to the end. I am so thankful to aaknopf, Russell Banks, PRH Audio, and Netgalley for granting me advanced audio and digital access to this read before it hits shelves on March 5, 2024.

Russell Banks takes listeners and readers on a ride of all rides as he narrates three true crime stories... at least, I'm sure they're based on true stories. I recognized the second one as the terrible case of The Hart family, where a pair of women adopted five black children from "abused" households and only neglected and abused them more, leaving their neighbors too concerned for their well-being.

Throughout this selection, themes of American politics, greed, and pride come through to note how such emotions often result in heartbreak, loss, and even death. Strap in and buckle up, because you're in for a ride.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, for an advance copy of this collection of short works about a small town in Upstate New York, from an author who wrote about America as it really was, full of pain, sadness, regret, ignorance, and worst of all lost hope.

Russell Banks was a writer with a rare gift, and a love for characters that others tend to omit, ignore, or write about only during election season. Banks wrote of Americans, doing ok, sometimes not. Of fathers who tried and failed, and of sons coming to grips with their place in life, or daughters just getting out to safe themselves. Little people, like a bus driver involved in a horrible accident, and an American hero to some, villain to others, John Brown in Cloudsplitter. Banks, wrote characters who were always just trying to get by, things just went wrong, and unfortunately humans are just humans, and there is nothing one can do. American Spirits is a collection of 3 stories, set in upstate New York, in the recent past, and dealing with politics, freedoms, families, failures and of course human frailty.

The books three stories take place in the same area of Upstate New York, and while some characters appear or are mentioned, they are not interlinked. All feature characters that have a clear plan, and a want for a life that is better than what they have now, its just that reality keeps getting in the way. Nowhere Man is about a family that has come into a bit of luck. Selling a plot of land and being able to pay off the mortgage, add a possible addition, and keep things going the way they are going. Except the land is now being used by a guy from New Jersey, to train either his high-tech security force, or his militia, depending on politics. Homeschooling is about two families living close together. One family is unconventional, which is confounding to the second family, and strains relations. Especially when the children keep saying that odd things are going on at home. The last is the Kidnapped, which tells of a couple who are taken to Canada by associates of their grandson, for money missing in a drug deal. This one sounds the most noirish, but is actually a deep look at family pain, trauma, and guilt.

American Spirits is also the name of the cigarettes smoked by some of the characters, a showing of the cancer that seems so present in our society, that only seems to be metastasizing. These are characters one really doesn't read or see, except maybe when politicians need votes. Ones who will knit hats for soldiers being deployed, while their lives slowly keep sliding down a hill they don't understand. Some are of the everyone's fault but me school, but deep down inside these characters don't understand why things are happening to them. In Kidnapped the couple was so proud of their son joining the army after 9/11 for God and country, but God took their son home, and left them with a Grandson they didn't understand. And years later left them with more problems. The first story, the owner of the house blames all them liberals, but not President Trump, for listening to all them guns going off at all hours. There are a lot of extremes in these stories. And confusion about what is right, or even how to make things right.

Recommended as Russell Banks was a great writer and his last works should be celebrated. Highly also recommend The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction and Foregone, one I don't think gets enough attention, but one I really enjoyed. This might not be a book for everyone since many read to escape reality, but one would be doing oneself a disservice.

I am not a fan of this book because I'm not sure how it all came together. It seemed like one story started and ended abruptly and the next did the same thing. It was just confusing.

Three interrelated short stories taking place in a rural fictional town in upstate New York. I liked how the stories focused on conservative blue color Trump supporters. Not a storyline you see often in literature. I found the first 2 stories very compelling and enjoyed the writing style. The third story was not as compelling.

American Spirits by Russel Banks is not the kind of book you “like,” it is the kind of book you think about and react to, the kind of book you want to talk about with a friend or a group, because the stories are touch on some of the biggest issues of our modern society - guns, drugs, violence, economic inequality, and the ways we treat those who hold different political views from our own. I think my biggest problem with this book was the way the stories were told - by an omniscient narrator well after the fact - which took away some of the emotional impact. Intriguing. Dark. Highly readable and disturbing.

Thornton Wilder gave us Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire and Russell Banks gives us Sam Dent, New York. Both communities are small, rural, and isolated. Considering the three stories in Banks’ AMERICAN SPIRITS in the light of Wilder’s OUR TOWN, however, one can’t help but speculate on how the passage of time has warped our vision of America. On one hand, we have stories that focus on the comfortable quotidian, while on the other the stories force us to ponder the darkness that seems to pervade the scene today.

Sam Dent is a community founded on optimistic land speculation following the revolutionary war, but the Banks’ stories seem to suggest that the American experiment may be floundering and clearly facing existential threats.

Hostility leading to tragedy underlies each story. In “Nowhere Man” a man sells a piece of property to a survivalist who has plans to turn it into a training camp for right wing activists. It is not surprising that guns and toxic masculinity ensue with predictable tragic consequences. “Homeschooling” seems to be based on actual events recently reported in the news. A lesbian couple have adopted four at risk African American children. The women’s strangeness and stories told by their children raise the suspicions of the neighbors who intervene resulting in yet another tragedy. The back porch gossip in the Wilder play is now replaced by social media. The final novella (“Kidnapped”) is a dark story with a tangled plot involving drug deals, guns, revenge, kidnapping, and murder. This one is a little less believable than the other two, mainly because the characters seem to be untethered to reality. I think making some of the main characters descendants of the original founders of the village is revealing, however, as it suggests just how far off the rails we may have come.

Banks’ vision of America seems dark and pessimistic, yet his talent for storytelling clearly is on display in all three novellas. Despite their unrelenting darkness, these are suspenseful and compelling stories of 21st century America worthy of the late Russell Banks.

Ever since the early fame of "Continental Drift" through "Affliction" (which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film) and last year's search for a paradisiacal sense of Americana in "The Magic Kingdom," Russell Banks has been on the Mount Rushmore of living North American storytellers alongside the likes of Atwood, Robinson, Irving, and McCarthy. "American Spirits" is an elegant, compelling legacy left by one of the G.O.A.T.S. He will be missed.

These three stories took my breath away! Wow! Wow! Wow! Russell Banks will be missed. These stories will haunt you.

I haven't had great luck with Russell Banks writing in the past, although I'm always intrigued by his concepts and so give his books a try despite rarely finding myself connecting with them. Unfortunately, this book held true to that tradition for me. Despite a really interesting idea and a fantastic cover, I just couldn't find my way into this one. His writing style just doesn't resonate with me and I find his characterizations difficulty connect with also. This one just wasn't a good fit for me.

This was wildly depressing, but in a good way. I really was into the storylines, and wanted to get to know these people better. He did a great job of developing his characters.

Three short stories are connected by northeastern conservatives in a city named, Sam Dent, after the founder of this small town in upper state New York.

“Nowhere Man” is about a man who sells 320 acres after his father dies for $250,000 to be split between his siblings. He didn’t realize that the buyer would be building a security training camp for militant extremists on this land with no trespassing for hunters.

“Homeschooling” is about two lesbian mothers who raise four Black adopted children from Texas. They think they know best on how to educate them but the neighbors aren’t so sure this is working.

“Kidnapped” is about grandparents who are taken captive to Canada for drug money. Will they be released?

The three short stories are well written which sparks a lot of emotional feelings. The characters and settings take you right there. However, the author mentioned “Trump” in each one which leaves a good or bad impression to readers who either love or dislike the former president.

The stories make us more aware of difficult-to-solve problems with ordinary folks in America. I imagine, that’s why Russell Banks wrote these before he passed in January, 2023 hoping that we could learn from them. He was a great storyteller and will be missed.

My thanks to Alfred A. Knopf and NetGalley for allowing me to read an early copy of this book with a release date of March 5, 2024.

There are not many authors, who can write a book such as this, and make it so wonderful. He truly is an American treasurer, and I look forward to many more books by him.

In three very loosely connected novellas, there is a low-level threat underlying each compelling story—not traditional suspense, but a tension and this sense that you, the reader, should keep on your toes because there is probably not going to be a happy ending.

What connects the stories primarily is the setting: A fictional rural town in upstate New York. More than one character has a MAGA hat, and, while conceding that Trump isn’t perfect, there’s a sense that even though he’s a lunatic, he’s a lunatic who is on *their* side—the side of the regular Joe who is white and owns more than one gun.

I enjoyed this book. It’s the first I’ve read by Russell Banks and was sorry to read about his passing.

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this novel, which RELEASES MARCH 5, 2024.