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"Joshua Mohr's scorching, jacked-up prose nearly burned my eyes out; and his main character, a young man known as Rhonda, is one of the most troubled and heartbreaking people you will ever encounter in literature." ?Donald Ray Pollock

"This bold new writer has an uncanny gift for tapping our most dangerous desires. Open the trapdoor at the bottom of the dumpster and prepare yourself to enter a wonderland where violence may pave your path to strange love and potent healing." ?Melanie Rae Thon

?A startling debut. Joshua Mohr takes us to a different city, but a city we know, populated by the dark side of ourselves.??Stephen Elliott

Following a 30-year-old man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization, Some Things That Meant the World to Me is a gritty and beautiful work that is creative and hypnotic, and should stand as an introduction of an original new voice to American literature.

When Rhonda was a child ? abandoned and ignored by his mother; abused and misguided by his mother's boyfriend ? he imagined the rooms of his home drifting apart from one another like separating continents. Years later, after an embarassing episode as an adult, Rhonda's inner-child appears, leading him to a trapdoor in the bottom of a dumpster behind a taqueria that will force him to finally confront his troubled past.

In the spirit of Cruddy and Hairstyles of the Damned, Joshua Mohr has created a remarkable and unforgettable character in this charmingly poetic and maturely crafted first novel.

Joshua Mohr has been published in Other Voices, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast, among others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches at a halfway house.

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