Named a “Great Lakes, Great Reads” selection by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association, the 16 stories in Something that Feels Like Truth take us on a page-turning journey from the American heartland to as far away as Paris. Reflecting the unique insights of an engineer who took up fiction writing late in life, Donald Lystra’s stories bring us ordinary people navigating life’s difficult boundaries—of age and love and family—and sometimes finding redemption at the risk of searing regret. The American Library Association’sBooklist called Something that Feels Like Truth “luminous …. a stellar collection of masterfully crafted gems,” and the Kansas City Star said: “Lystra draws the bleak, beautiful landscape of the Great Lakes region in quick, sharp strokes, and brings its inhabitants to life with compassion and tenderness.”

Born in 1945, Lystra received degrees in electrical engineering (’68) and sociology (’75) from U-M. His first book, a 2009 novel set in northern Michigan in 1957 entitled Season of Water and Ice, captured both the Midwest Book Award and the Michigan Notable Book Award. Lystra has received writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, and his work received special mention in the Pushcart Prizes. He and his wife divide their time between Ann Arbor and a farm in northern Michigan. He has two grown children.