Get 'em Young, Treat 'em Tough, Tell 'em Nothing

Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean's reports from the eternal battlefront that is the United States. Ranging across the continent, from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse beneath the question of how to live a decent life. Here you'll find stolen children living life to the fullest on the run and on the road, soldiers guarding empty frontiers, and rugged individualists brought low by an uncaring nature. You'll find prehistoric beasts rubbing talons with hustlers as well as death machines lurking beneath the bucolic countryside. Here you'll find hatred, friendship, and pitch-black humor all seething in the same stew. Get 'em Young, Treat 'em Tough, Tell 'em Nothing marries the sardonic moral and political explorations of a Flannery O'Connor to the surreal, scuzzy wit of a Denis Johnson. It is a brazen State of the Union for a nation on the edge.

Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her debut novel Pity the Beast was chosen in multiple Best Books of 2021 lists in outlets such as the Guardian, Wall Street Journal and The White Review, while the American Booksellers Association chose it as an Indie Next pick. She teaches writing across the U.S. and internationally, and currently lives in the high desert West.