The Earth Room - by Dana Diehl (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Earth Room transports us from the forests of Appalachia to the Sonoran Desert to the glaciers of Iceland, all while exploring the mysteries of what it means to be alive.

In one story, a woman transforms her boyfriend into a salamander. In another, a group of women are drawn together by a support group for the partners of vampires and werewolves. Inhabiting this haunting and fantastical collection are secret tunnels, magical doorways, modern witches, a mother who gives birth to a ghost, a town full of doubles, a sanctuary for potbelly pigs, and a daughter who never grows up. The Earth Room offers a thrilling, fabulist journey through the natural world, superstition, motherhood, and loss.

Review Quotes

The Earth Room is wonderful, fantastical, warm and searching. The characters roam worlds that are strange mirrors of our own. Through Diehl's sublime world-building we discover the magic behind every item and instance we had once thought common and straightforward. Reading through these surprising twists and perfect turns was pure delight, like drinking a perfectly sweetened cup of black tea with milk. This is my favorite kind of book. Both inspired and inspiring. I loved it. --Diane Cook, author of The New Wilderness

I was impressed by how often the stories in Diehl's The Earth Room surprised me with their mix of reality and fabulism. There's something for everyone in this collection: wolves, motherhood, romance, daughterhood, witches, vampire boyfriends, and Stardew Valley. This book is a spring morning filled with blooming buds and unusual fungi and longing. --Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly

The Earth Room is a revelation! Deftly straddling the human and the fantastical, this collection delights with its elegance and insight, and also with its many surprises. From rogue teeth to inexplicable disappearances, glaciers to underground tunnels, Dana Diehl's fiction explores the many mysteries of existence, reminding us how much we have yet to discover in the world around us--as well as in our own hearts. --Allegra Hyde, author of The Last Catastrophe

These surreal tales bubble with ghost babies and shed skins and long legends, with people who aren't quite people and those who are much more than people, hungry for meanings and connection and sometimes something more sinister. I loved the space I got to live in for a while reading this book. --Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

Frosty and blistering, The Earth Room's short stories feature mothers, daughters, and lovers unearthing their pasts and thawing their presents. --Foreword Reviews

About the Author

Dana Diehl is the author of the short story collection, Our Dreams Might Align, and the collaborative collection, The Classroom. Her chapbook, TV Girls, won the 2017-2018 New Delta Review Chapbook Contest judged by Chen Chen. Diehl earned her MFA in Fiction at Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Necessary Fiction, Waxwing, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Raised in Pennsylvania, she now teaches and writes in southern Arizona.