Visionary Forms Dramatic

Rural Indiana native Kai Edward Warmoth's debut short story collection with Sentimental Press showcases the artist's deep dive into the grit, underbelly, and spiritually resilient Midwestern Americana landscape. With characters that are at once full of fury and force, as well as capable of great tenderness, Warmoth's story collection explores the vicious eruption of state violence on the family order, the languishing of the uninitiated in their quest for pills to quell a toothache- the rebellious world staring a tourist God in the face as he walks the earth, and the matriarch's touch that binds us together to form unity and cohesion as we adopt to a life that is both full of pain and relentlessly seeking God. While staring nihilism in the face and adopting moments of futility, Warmoth is never truly willing to surrender to the idea that God is dead.

Readers seeking a cohesive text can explore the stories start to finish, as the motifs piece together a cohesive ideological underpinning for the world that has fallen. If anything can be believed, it's that words themselves are both a force for transformation and are merely just tools or, according to the author, words themselves. There is no taboo or sacred cow that is to be spared by Warmoth. He is here to both romanticize and mourn, and he allows us the window with which to join him on that human journey.