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1 week ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
The following is an excerpt from my new book, The Last American Road Trip. You can order it here and get a signed copy here. ***On the first day of our Route 66 trip, the media announced that Donald Trump would be indicted that week. I did not believe them because I had heard this claim every year since 2016 and throughout my 1980s and 1990s childhood, when reporters were more straightforward about his ties to organized crime. Trump had been under federal investigation since before I was born.
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3 weeks ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
Let’s get this out of the way: My new book, The Last American Road Trip, is out today. This newsletter has 51,000 subscribers. Now if all 51,000 of you go out and buy the book, that would be terrific! I would like to stop promoting it and get back to what I love: writing.
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4 weeks ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
There is less than a week until the publication of my new book, The Last American Road Trip, which you can preorder here! Preorders are VERY important, so if you like my writing, and want it to continue, please preorder today. I don’t get paid a hell of a lot for these books. If you’d like me to pay my bills, consider being a volunteer paid subscriber to this newsletter, which supports my family.
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1 month ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
My new book, The Last American Road Trip, comes out April 1 — and I’m going on tour! I will be talking with guest hosts, taking questions from the audience, and signing and personalizing copies of my books. Tours are nerve-wracking, but meeting my readers has been a highlight of my life and career. It’s exciting to get to see folks face to face and I hope you all can make it! I’m grateful for the independent bookstores that make this tour possible. Here are the dates, venues, and information.
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1 month ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
I am in The Black Place. The ground is white and cracked and leads to undulating gray hills. The hills stretch for miles, but I know which one I want. I spot it like my own reflection and start walking its way. There are times I pass a mirror and don’t recognize myself. I got old too fast and saw too much. People think I’m younger than I am until they catch the look in my eye. The Black Place has seen too much. It absorbed its dark recollections into the soil and put them on display.
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1 month ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
Thank you, subscribers, for all your thoughtful questions! I answered most of them and tried to address the main points of the questions I didn’t list. I apologize that I ran out of space before I could get to them all!If you’d like to submit a question, become a paying subscriber. You can do that here:Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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1 month ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
Hello readers! It is time for our monthly Q & A. This will be the last written Q & A I do for a while, because I’m getting ready for the release of my new book, The Last American Road Trip, on April 1. The book is available for preorder at any major or independent bookstore in print, eBook, and audiobook. Autographed copies are available here! You can read rave reviews at Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.
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2 months ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
I was going to make a noose, but instead I made a basket. The basket coils like a snake in wait, white string binding plain brown rope. It is small but taut. When I rest it on its side, it looks like an eye. I put it on my bedside so it can watch over me as I sleep. The basket is too small to hold anything but my nightmares. But I know it’s working, because I used up all the rope for my noose. * * *I wanted to stab someone 8000 times. Instead, I cross-stitched an ancient design.
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2 months ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
There were coyote tracks at the Missouri mine. They weren’t supposed to be there. No one understood how such a distant predator got in or how to keep it out. But that’s true about a lot of places in America these days. We were wandering the ruins of Federal Mill Number Three, the largest lead mine in the US until its closure in 1972. For centuries, most lead came from Missouri. Ammunition for every war, toxic paint for every child’s classroom, noxious petrol for every parent’s car.
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2 months ago | 
sarahkendzior.substack.com | Sarah Kendzior
I woke up to a note I had no memory of writing. I scrawled it in the dead of night, a time I used to dread but now embrace, because the nightmare-makers sleep then too. It is January 2025. The future has caught up with my prognostications and I’ve started rationing reality: as Shirley Jackson noted, too much of it makes you insane. But I’ve written the story of American autocracy so manydamn times that I can’t watch it play out at the speed of life.