A History of Heartache

“Strickland laces his hardscrabble scenes with lyricism … In each piece, grief underscores the characters’ recklessness, imbuing the collection with an unsentimental but tender emotional register. Strickland’s humane depictions of people living on the margins acknowledge the forces that shape them.” — Publishers Weekly

“An instant classic of grit lit.” — Texas Monthly

“Bleak but clear-eyed, abrasive but thoughtful, these stories show a shadow world existing in the corners of our current moment.” — Southern Review of Books

“Peopled by the bereaved, the lost and the haunted, these stunning stories, set in the small towns of North Texas, are also shot with dark humor and fleeting tenderness. … bleak, but beautifully articulated, stories.” — Daily Mail

“Patrick Strickland … is a fiction writer who is here to stay.” - Texas Public Radio “Peels back the mask of a worn-out suburbia to reveal stark human tragedy.” — Dallas Morning News

“A poignant and often wicked series of stories.” — Dallas Observer

“Through his vivid, voice-driven prose, Strickland mingles societal crises and systemic obstacles with his characters’ attempts at personal survival or redemption.” — Chapter 16

“Chronicles the struggles of working-class characters leading hard-scrabble lives.” — Houston Chronicle

“Characters catch flashes of light, even as they are haunted by heartache — and around the margins of this traumatized world, there are moments of mercy and even glimpses of hope.” — Southern Literary Review

“Patrick Strickland writes with economy, muscle, and beauty, and these stories can both break and warm your heart at the same time.” — Michael Farris Smith, author of Lay Your Armor Down

“Easily the best collection of short fiction I’ve read in years, A History of Heartache not only proves Strickland’s skill as a reporter is matched only by his gift as a storyteller, it marks the arrival of an important new voice in contemporary fiction.” — Marya Hornbacher, New York Times-bestselling author of Wasted

“Meet Strickland’s hard-boiled, broken, and downtrodden — North America’s lost. Read their stories of motel graveyard shifts, single parenting, and drinking. Just know your heart will break.” — Adrianne Kalfopoulou, author of A History of Too Much

Patrick Strickland is an award-winning journalist and author from Texas. He has reported from fifteen countries across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, covering immigration, the rise of the far right, humanitarian catastrophes, and armed conflict. He was a 2024 de Groot Foundation Writer of Note.

His reportage has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Politico, The Guardian, Vice, and In These Times.

Based in Athens, Greece, he is the managing editor of Inkstick Media. His previous books are:

• Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe’s Anti-Fascist Struggle
• The Marauders: Standing Up to Vigilantes in the American Borderlands
• You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave: Refugees, Fascism, and Bloodshed in Greece

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