Like stones cast into a river, these sixteen moving, intimate stories illuminate how devotion and degeneration ripple through a working-class Polish American community in the postindustrial Midwest. At the heart of the collection is Eddie “The Bronko” Bronkowski, a boxer with a losing record whose reputation as a human punching bag precedes him. In each of Anthony Bukoski’s rich stories, tough yet sympathetic characters—the second cook on a Great Lakes freighter, a World War II veteran, the emcee of a female boxing troupe—take all that life throws at them, protecting those around them as best they can.
 
In Bukoski’s interconnected tales, the heart seeks its due despite familial conflict, the challenges of maritime work, and the slow yet inexorable decline of dementia. Beautiful vignettes express transformative moments: tenderness that can turn a cardboard crown into gold and the faint ghosts of memories long forgotten. A tour-de-force, The Blondes of Wisconsin knows what love is—and what it means to lose it.

The Thief of Words is filled with desperate runaways, the unhappily married, and the displaced. They often long for happiness but struggle to explain—even to themselves—what that would entail.

The lightly interconnected stories in this riveting collection are split between the Polish American communities of northern Wisconsin and Louisiana, where refugees from World War II were resettled under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The collection explores themes of dislocation and assimilation, love and loneliness, and generational conflict. Anthony Bukoski admirably paints portraits of people doing their best, despite the odds and their sometimes-thwarted attempts to follow the urgings of their better angels.

Filled with humor and pathos and populated by fully realized characters, this is a beautifully written collection from an accomplished storyteller.