IN THE MORNING, THE CITY IS THE PRAIRIE

Fiction. Belle Point Press, 2023. Paperback, 182 pages. 5.5" x 8.5"

From NMB: What got us loving this book right away was its sharp, observant, funny, and frequently beautiful prose. It’s a “conventional” novel in the best sense of the term—full of rich, loveable, flawed characters. It would make a great indie movie, except the utter charm of its realer-than-real interior monologue would be lost. A “coming-of-age” story about challenges we continue to confront throughout life: our relationships with work, revolutionary politics, family, friends, lovers, death, and Costco. A book deeply invested in Oklahoma City, yet taking in the issues that are coming for us all. The calling cards of the Midwest are here: severe weather, open spaces, the slow Sonic and the fast Sonic. Midwesterners, take note; non-Midwesterners, also take note. 

From the press: From the author of The World and the Zoo comes a new coming-of-age story as powerful as the Southern Plains landscape that surrounds it. With echoes of The Moviegoer, In the Morning, The City is the Prairie follows Matt Bennet, a soulful yet aimless twenty-something who has little more to offer than a Costco discount while living with his parents in Oklahoma City.

Confronted by a family health crisis, Matt becomes more attuned to the needs of those he loves—and how he can best fit himself into the world—largely inspired by the more passionate and ambitious young women in his life: his girlfriend, a public school teacher participating in the Oklahoma teachers’ strike of 2018, and his younger sister, a teenage idealist determined to make a difference. Throughout the novel, Rob Roensch raises the question of what we can see if we learn how to look.

Rob Roensch is the author of the novella, The World and the Zoo (Outpost19), and the story collection, The Wildflowers of Baltimore (Salt). He lives in Oklahoma City and teaches at Oklahoma City University.