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A poignant and often wicked series of stories from North Texas author and journalist Patrick Strickland, A History of Heartache, will hit bookshelves and will be available online April 21. The debut short-story collection is a tale of loosely woven together characters who share a tendency toward bad luck and hard times.
Equally painful to read as it is eye-opening, each chapter is a hesitant page turner, like driving up to a gruesome accident on a lonely back road where sirens and lights cautioned you, but you drive on anyway. It’s a breezy read, vacillating seamlessly between character voices, with enough biting wit to lure you in and keep you coming back.
The book, from publisher Melville House, was named one of The Best Southern Books of April 2026 by the Southern Review of Books. In a review, Toby LeBlanc writes:
“Bleak but clear-eyed, abrasive but thoughtful, these stories show a shadow world existing in the corners of our current moment, threatening to grow and take over like the blight of every neighborhood contained in these pages. These characters do not have much agency, and the impact of their self-destruction ripples across our collective conscience.”
Strickland will be at Deep Vellum Books this Tuesday, April 21, at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the book and take questions. Dallas Observer food editor, Lauren Drewes Daniels, will moderate.
Strickland has authored three nonfiction books covering the far right and migration, including The Marauders, a fascinating in-depth look at far-right militias patrolling border towns in southern Arizona. You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave and Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe’s Antifascist Struggle are his other two titles.
Strickland grew up in North Texas and attended Plano East Senior High. After graduating from the University of North Texas, he received his master’s at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He was the news editor at the Dallas Observer in 2021 and 2022. His work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Time, Al Jazeera and The Dallas Morning News. He is currently based in Athens, Greece, where he is the managing editor at Inkstick Media.
