August 1995. A German kid lands in Kansas with a suitcase, a mixtape he can't bring himself to play, and his father's theory that environment changes people more efficiently than willpower.
Marion, Kansas. Population 1,932. Frederick Klein arrives for an exchange year with the Corbetts: Frank, who negotiates like weather; Jan, who could fold you into a casserole and send you back to life improved; Jon, built like the town's front line; and two sisters who take turns deciding whether he's worth the wait.
Then, outside Carlson's grocery store, he sees it: a white 1965 Mustang, FOR SALE sign leaning in the windshield, and a girl in the passenger seat he can't quite translate yet.
Around the car, a life assembles. A history teacher who communicates through Sandy Koufax and hands out VHS tapes like assignments. A corner booth where a catcher with bad knees and a friend who speaks entirely in aphorisms hold court over Red Vines and bad movies. Friday nights when the whole town fits inside one stadium, church marquees where JESUS SAVES briefly shares billing with GO WARRIORS, slow laps down Main Street in a car that asks to be looked at. And on the other end of every phone call, Berlin, waiting to see what the experiment yields.
The Stang: A Kansas Tale is a coming-of-age novel about finding a language for yourself in a place that isn't yours. Set in the American heartland of the mid-nineties, it's a love letter to small-town Kansas and to everyone who ever arrived somewhere a stranger and left something else.
