Erika Krouse

Save Me, Stranger is a winter solstice kind of book. Set against chilly, windblown locales—the crags of Idaho, a haunted B & B in the Rockies, the endless mountains of Alaska—there’s the bite of loneliness and desperation in these pages. The narrators in Erika Krouse’s short story collection are at a breaking point; they’re out of answers, at the end of themselves. And yet, like the winter solstice, there’s movement, a gradual shift towards the light. Taken together, these 12 stories of people in crisis are strangely uplifting. Change, self-realization and transformation are possible in these edgy stories, set in such diverse locations as Ohio, Bangkok, Alaska, New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado. Linked by a spirit of urgent serendipity, Krouse’s characters find themselves acting in surprising ways. In dire straits, they must choose to change, to act, to save themselves. Everyone needs a second chance, or maybe even a third or fourth.

Krouse’s writing is funny and tender, but never sentimental, and the topics she tackles are controversial, including domestic violence, gang life, euthanasia and abortion. “North of Dodge” features a teenage runaway who finds a sense of community driving an ice cream truck. Her route is gang territory; her customers include pimps and prostitutes. The white narrator—called “Vanilla Bonilla” by her black customers—befriends two young boys in danger of being swallowed up by their violent surroundings and contemplates another life for them all.

“I stepped out of the truck,” Vanilla Bonilla says. “The children stood and slapped gravel from their pants, watching me. I pointed at the truck door I’d left open for them. You can correct the tilt of the earth if you just follow the signs. Two scared and dirty kids, an interstate pulsing beside you, and a reason to live. That’s all the world gives you: chances.”

Salvation happens in a flash in the title story “Save Me, Stranger,” when a single mother protecting her daughter during a robbery is taken hostage. After one of the robbers violently jams his gun against her ear, a teenage boy, “all gangly muscle and knobby bones,” steps forward in her place. “Take me instead,” he tells the robbers. Before the boy is killed, he looks meaningfully at the mother and utters one word: “Olivia.” This sets the mother on a mission to find Olivia and tell her of the boy’s heroism.

These stories pack a visceral punch. “The Blue Hole” features a pregnant college student contemplating abortion while on a risky scuba diving trip in New Mexico, while another, “Wounds of the Heart and Great Vessels,” tells of the unlikely story of Rachel and Dr. David Constantino, the anesthesiologist she meets on an internet dating site. When David shows up on her doorstep confused and distraught, he tells her he accidentally killed a patient who was allergic to anesthesia. “He was crooked and wretched, and too tall for my apartment,” Rachel recalls. “He smelled like rotten chicken. I nudged him onto my sofa. …And then he was crying. I had seen only kids cry like this, not men. His mouth opened, and his feelings fell out onto my shoulder.” As Rachel nurses David back to health, she finds the strength to confront her own sorrowful past.

Fans of Lorrie Moore and Jo Ann Beard, readers who dig funny, fierce female narrators, will relish the quirky, honest people who turn up in this short story collection. There is nothing neat or tidy about the revelations in Save Me, Stranger. Krouse’s knock-out prose and unforgettable characters will stay with them long after they close this candle of a book, which emits warmth and light. See our interview with Krouse here.