Stay Here with Me: A Memoir - Softcover

Stay Here with Me is really a fictional "memoir" of Robert Olmstead's life. Though the main facts are true--he grew up on a farm, went to college at 19, and performed a variety of odd jobs in between cross-country motorcycle adventures--Olmstead is gifted in the art of embroidering facts. He describes in amusing detail how he and two other farm helpers lifted a ton stone, by hand, and boasts that he was so adjusted to natural time on the farm, he didn't learn to read a clock until he was 14. Readers will want to believe the brilliant and tender rendering of a youthful romance, though the young lady in question just might object to Olmstead's recollection of it.

Hailed as one of the most original voices in contemporary fiction by Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, and Tobias Wolff, Robert Olmstead is the author of three novels, a memoir, and a collection of stories. He has been a logger, a farmer, and a teacher, among other professions. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he lives in Ohio.