Ore Vein
Ore Vein, the debut short story collection by Danilo John Thomas, explores the thin spaces between hardship and heroism prevalent in small-town America. Thomas captures what it feels like to come of age among the urban decay and cracked pastoral landscapes of Southwestern Montana and a fictionalized version of the town where he was raised. From the claustrophobia of crumbling mine shafts to the senseless consequences of bar brawls, these stories are at once mystical and all too real, violent yet deeply introspective, masculine but tender.
In “Gift Horse” Tarin and her father, an aging football star, are visited by the children of a childhood friend, and they want to go fishing in the mountains . . . in the middle of the night; in “Beating the Dead” Pinpurse kills snakes with his sister hoping to dredge up some sympathy. Instead, he faces some hard truths; and in “Birdbone,” a horrific mine accident buries Tom Birdbone. Unable to go back underground after being rescued, he finds a job in an import warehouse where the demands of furnishing the rich may come at too high a cost.
Ore Vein, like the mines it showcases, digs deep in dark places after fortunes, showing what it means to hit the mother lode and, sometimes, what it means to lose it.
PRAISE FOR ORE VEIN
Lyric, lushly atmospheric, and coyly funny, Ore Vein by Danilo J Thomas is both a love song and grief rattle for Montana, its people and land. These stories shimmer with grit and myth, and build a portrait of Montana that ranges a hundred years, as chilling as Cormac McCarthy, as dark as Breece D'J Pancake, and yet, as tender-hearted and fully-rendered as anything I've ever read. I'm awed by the writing and range, and will be thinking about these stories for a long, long time. -Tessa Fontaine, author of The Red Grove and The Electric Woman
Danilo Thomas’s Ore Vein tenderly loves what and who we’re told not to love: the earth, free animals, and country folks. He loves it enough to tend to everything from the tiny to the monumental— from beaver teeth stuck in a car’s oil pan, to glacial dams, to a vandalized sky. I’ve never read anything like Ore Vein. -Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat, water and power, and Tannery Bay
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danilo John Thomas is the author of the short story collection, Ore Vein (Veliz Books, 2026) and two chapbooks, The Hand Implements (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2017), and Murk (AB Gorham, 2012). A graduate of the PhD program in creative writing at Florida State University, he is recently the co-publisher at Octopus Books, managing and prose editor at Baobab Press, and assistant managing editor at The Kenyon Review. Born and raised in Southwestern Montana, he now lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife, two daughters, and one toothsome staffy.
