A Library Journal Key Indie Fiction Title, Fall 2014A BBC.com Book to Read for October, 2014Meet Xavier Boland, the untouchable cross-dresser, who walks loose and carefree as an old Broadway tune. Meet Miss Penrice, a lost old woman forced by wartime to parent a child for the first time. Meet a Zamboni mechanic turned funeral porteur, Madame Poirer’s lapdog (and its chastity belt), a congregation of hard-singing, sex-obsessed Pentecostals, and more. With The Freedom in American Songs, Kathleen Winter brings her unusual sensuality, lyrically rendered settings, and subversive humour to bear on a new story collection about modern loneliness, small-town gay teens, catastrophic love, and the holiness of ordinary life.Praise for Kathleen Winter“Utterly original.”—O, The Oprah Magazine“Absorbing, earnest. … Beautifully written.”—The New York Times Book Review“Her lyrical voice and her crystalline landscape are enchanting.”—The New Yorker“Read it because it's a story told with sensitivity to language that compels to the last page, and read it because it asks the most existential of questions. Stripped of the trappings of gender, Winter asks, what are we?” – The Globe and Mail“She captures the way the truth both imprisons us and sets us free. … Simple, touching, real, absolutely convincing and sympathetic.”—The Rumpus“A major writer.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
