The Strange Beautiful

(Paperback)

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From debut fiction writer Carla Crujido comes a delicately intertwined, fairytale-inspired collection of short stories. Part vivid historical drama, part melancholy fever dream, The Strange Beautiful centers on Mount Vernon Apartments in Spokane, Washington, offering a glimpse into the lives of ten tenants over a period of one hundred years.

In the opening story, "The Songbird," we meet the building's caretaker, a WWI veteran trying to rebuild his life amidst the Spanish flu pandemic. "The Telephone" takes us inside Apartment B, where a 21st-century poet's longing for a bygone era nurtures a friendship that transcends time. A 1930s department store mannequin navigates the challenges of womanhood in the surreal, darkly humorous tale, "The Mannequin." And in "The Suitcase," an exhausted woman scrambles to tidy up her boyfriend's unprocessed emotions, which have materialized inside boxes all over the apartment.

As we witness the quiet but fraught moments of the tenants' everyday lives, these uncanny narratives create a world that is at once familiar and fantastic. A striking portrait of a city not often depicted in literature, The Strange Beautiful leads us through the streets of Spokane and the similarly evolving internal landscapes of these ten characters. Crujido's masterful storytelling shows us how a single place can hold a myriad of histories, how our lives are interconnected with strangers, and how our collective tales are forever repeating.

Reviews

Carla Crujido conjures. With these dark, sexy, haunting modern fairy tales, she evokes and transcends West Coast nostalgia, glamour, and all the ways the past is never past. Crujido will leave you dreaming, craving more of her mesmerizing prose and her enchanted places, ghosts, and characters.

-Chelsea Hicks, author of A Calm and Normal Heart

Carla Crujido's The Strange Beautiful invites us into a mycelium of stories, one haunting Spokane apartment at a time. Full of surreal wonder, each story moves us forward in time with visceral, inventive, and intimate language - replete with winged women and oceanic Fugu poison. "Sugared with sadness," the imagery in The Strange Beautiful is phenomenally felt, and I know readers will want to live in the vibrational rooms of these stories as I did.

-Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

The gorgeous stories in The Strange Beautiful map a century in Spokane's enigmatic Mt. Vernon apartments. Throughout that tender passage, Carla Crujido builds a collection of unforgettable tenants who enchant, fumble love, chase meaning, and connect in surprising, sometimes magical ways. A mannequin, a baker, a songbird, each character's resonance will extend far beyond this charming address. This venerable, tender collection captured my imagination and heart.

-Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Parakeet

The stories in Carla Crujido's The Strange Beautiful deliver lasting magic. Through the lives lived in Spokane's Mt. Vernon apartments, through generations of unforgettable residents, Crujido weaves a spell of an injured soldier turned hotel worker, a mannequin given a chance at life, songbirds and bakers, lovers and oppressors. The ways the stories are interconnected is masterful. It's difficult to believe this is a debut, and it's one to be celebrated.

-Toni Jensen, author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land

With fairytale twists, the expertly-crafted stories in The Strange Beautiful are a compelling study of humanity in all its heartbreaking tragedy and breath-catching beauty. Each of these stories is connected to a magical apartment building where, as in life, the lines between light and dark are blurred. These characters, and this place, stayed with me long after I finished reading.

-Kelli Estes, USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

Author Bio

Carla Crujido is the Nonfiction Editor at River Styx Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and has had work published in Crazyhorse, Yellow Medicine Review, Ricepaper Magazine, Tinfish Press, The Ana, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon.