A History of Heartache

In this debut collection, celebrated journalist Patrick Strickland's vivid and character-driven stories are as true to life as his award-winning reportage.

In A History of Heartache, boys grow up fast in the blazing heat of North Texas, and men grow old before their time. A wayward son rides shotgun into a night he can't take back. A janitor at an abortion clinic can’t outrun a ghost—or a camera. Strickland writes with clear-eyed realism and unsparing craftsmanship about common people—fathers and sons; widowers and junkies—poised on the knife-edge of hope.

With taut sentences and a wicked sense of humor, these 15 stories chart the small mercies and big mistakes that make a life: the songs we inherit, the bottles we empty, the tools we fashion from whatever’s at hand. Gritty and tender in the same breath, this debut fiction collection asks what it costs to stay, what it takes to leave, and who we become when we do. Readers of Denis Johnson and Ron Rash will recognize the hard light, bruised humor, and sudden grace that burn through these pages.Patrick Strickland is a journalist from Texas. He’s the author of three nonfiction books on the far right and migration: You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave (2025), The Marauders (2022), and Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe’s Antifascist Struggle (2018). His reporting has appeared at The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Time, Al Jezeera, and elsewhere. His fiction has appeared in Epiphany, Pithead Chapel, and the Porter House Review, among others. He was the winner of the de Groot Foundation's 2024 COURAGE TO WRITE award. He is currently the managing editor of Inkstick Media, based in Athens, Greece.