Like an arrowhead, the title story in this collection pierces through our tough skin and through to what's delicate within. It's the first piece in a triptych that elegantly holds together this stunning collection about love and loss and longing--our feeble human institutions and fragile relationships broken down and rusting; our tender hearts shot through with tragedy and dysfunction but still struggling to stay alive, to find wholeness and healing and rebirth in nature, or just to keep beating as long as possible in the face of overwhelming sorrow.

"To touch the heart without even a hint of sentimentality is a tough trick for any fiction writer, and most of us never quite get it right. Giano Cromley not only pulls off this trick, he establishes touching the heart as his own particular genius that distinguishes him from other writers of talent and serious purpose. He makes you feel the depths of your own humanity. These stories are not only great reads, they are an enduring contribution to our literature." - Ernest Hebert, author of The Dogs of March, The Old American, and ten other novels.
 
"Giano Cromley's powerful stories feature blue collar characters who make mistakes, race blindly toward disaster, and frequently plunge over the rim into darkness. These are the folks Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams capture in their songs.  Survival in the aftermath is the key." - Richard Peabody, editor of Gargoyle Magazine
 
"Life isn't fair. This thought kept occurring to me with every story I consumed in Giano Cromley's lively new collection What We Build Upon the Ruins. In these stories, nothing is fair, not life, not death, not family, not nothing. All these characters can do is try to be okay, and what Cromley illustrates for us with his dexterous prose, is that if they keep fighting, and keep bleeding, and keep trying to feel something, anything, maybe they can be." - Ben Tanzer, author of Be Cool and SEX AND DEATH