Fiction! Disinformation! Run and hide, while there’s still time!
They told my agent my new novel could not be published. Too dangerous! You’re not allowed to question the Jan. 6 narrative, they said. It was the worst crisis since the Civil War, since the Visigoths sacked Rome. Delete your account.
He tried valiantly, but there were no takers, and we parted ways amicably. So I am publishing The Insurrectionist myself. And today the novel launches, in both paperback and ebook formats.
What’s it about?
Denied a promised posting in Paris, Ian Landquart, a reporter with the storied Chicago Bullet newspaper, is shunted off to a suburban bureau and assigned to redact racist language from the historical archives.
To salvage his career, he investigates an elephant-owning farmer who protested nonviolently on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. But as Ian gins up an FBI probe, he learns that his progressive teenage daughter is dating the farmer’s conservative, gun-owning son—ensnaring the teens in the case.
With a Swiftian eye, The Insurrectionist lampoons the news media, our woke era, and government overreach in J6 prosecutions. Defying the official narrative, The Insurrectionist explores the abusive nature of a politicized prosecution.
Praise for my previous books:
“[Resurrectionists] introduces a writer of unusual promise. Refusing the easy ironies and glassy surface of most contemporary fiction, Russell Working’s stories enact our uncertain and restless longing for freedom and transcendence—resurrection—against backgrounds and circumstances startling in their vivid actuality.”
—Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life
“Reminiscent of the early Paul Bowles, with the same muscular use of language, the same ability to create a mood fraught with tension….”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Working] has an amazing ability to draw the reader immediately into the world about which he is writing, whether it is the paper mills of the Pacific Northwest, where a former policeman is almost courting death, the Haiti of voodoo and the dread Tonton Macoutes, or the lazy hot summer afternoons of a group of young boys.”
—The New York Times
“Is there any life that Russell Working cannot imagine? In these powerful, haunting stories, he explores the private lives of Egyptian adolescent girls, a North Korean woman sold to a Chinese farmer, a Russian doctor whose child has been stolen, victims of every time and place, always with singular compassion. Outrage for the world’s lost and needy fuels The Irish Martyr, and intelligence and deep love imbue every sentence.”
—Erin McGraw, author of Lies of the Saints
“The Irish Martyr is a powerful, brave, and dangerous book that takes us to the borderlands where religion and geopolitics rip apart the lives of ordinary people. … He writes straight from the heart, with a moral indignation that is palpable.”
—Douglas Glover, author of Elle
“In The Irish Martyr, Russell Working bravely navigates a labyrinthine maze of politics and culture to bring us a searing look at our troubled world.”
—Ed Falco, author of Acid and In the Park of Culture
“Working’s greatest release of short stories yet, The Irish Martyr is enthusiastically recommended reading especially for those who have yet to discover the ever engaging literary, creative, and storytelling style of Russell Working.”
—The Midwest Book Review
“The Irish Martyr is a remarkable response to what is human everywhere.”
―Reginald Gibbons, author of Sweetbitter
“In his ten soulful stories, the author dives headfirst into the murky waters of his characters’ damaged but unforgettable lives. . . . With a style that is both poetic and raw, Working gives us characters from different nations, different realities, yet each is so fully realized and universal that it’s as if we are sharing their lives―and their hardships―for a brief time.”
―St. Anthony Messenger
“If Flannery O’Connor had lived to read The Irish Martyr, she would have written Russell Working a letter of appreciation. These stories are instructive and fascinating.”
―David Huddle, author of The Story of a Million Years
The Elephant Box 