In this month’s book review, we look at Brett Biebel’s debut collection, 48 Blitz, out December 15th from Split Lip Press. Read the review below, and read the collection’s opening story right here on The Masters Review: “Big Red Nation“
When Brett Biebel’s “Big Red Nation” came through our queue, one of our volunteer readers commented that she didn’t care at all about football but was still enthralled by the story. It’s a fine line that Biebel walks in so much of his debut collection, 48 Blitz, out next week from Split Lip Press. The 48 stories, almost all flash fiction, are set across the state of Nebraska and feature characters any Midwesterner would find familiar: the high school football heroes and the family farmers and the folks drinking Miller High Life on the football field in a late fall frost.
Football, often Husker football, is a core tenant of the Nebraskan philosophy. The days of the Big XII when Nebraska football dominated the NCAA may be just a memory (their last national championship was in 1999), but the characters that populate 48 Blitz are doing their part to keep it alive.
