The Persistence of Instability

Set in the rundown and forgotten Main Street’s of small-town America, The Persistence of Instability showcases all that is wrong with the human psyche while offering glimpses of better times. In these fifteen stories, Patrick Trotti creates a world both frighteningly familiar and altogether otherworldly. Featuring ten never before published stories, this collection delves into the gritty realism of people living on the periphery of society.

"There are writers who can take us to places of hardship, desperation, and hopelessness, but Patrick Trotti does more than take us there. Trotti transforms us so fully that the hardship, desperation, and hopelessness becomes our own. You are with the single mother at her AA meeting, trembling with the father who feels he has no options left but one. What Trotti does is magical. And he does it with the most broken materials he can find. The Persistence of Instability is a monument to those broken, and a witness to all that’s possible within a determined heart.”

Sheldon Lee Compton, author of Sway and Dysphoria: an Appalachian Gothic