The Magpie Funeral (Querencia Press 2023)
The Magpie Funeral follows a U.S. college professor taking leave from the Pennsylvanian rust belt to Zakopane, Poland in search of closure with his elderly grandfather, Jan. This act proves to unravel the tale of estrangement between three generations of men and their equally broken homes. Through his travels he befriends a local bartender and aspiring writer who not only helps bridge the emotional gap between fathers and sons but challenges the professor’s perceptions of art and love. Set to the natural backdrop of the Tatra region of the Carpathians, and the tiding of magpies nesting next to Jan’s mountain chalet, The Magpie Funeral is a story of culture, legacy, and the human capacity to forgive.
Reviews-
“Magpie Funeral is a story of seeking: family, culture, but most of all, understanding — to understand others, and to be understood. The characters that make up Adam Galanski’s tender-hearted, quiet novella find themselves attempting to communicate to one another, but because of their language and cultural barriers, well-meaning is often lost, creating rifts instead of bonds. So, it is in the suspended moments of silence —while harvesting mushrooms, cooking a meal— that an American-born writer and his Polish grandfather are able to connect in the Carpathian forest. Galanski has managed a sweeping family lore in an intimate space, cultivating authentic and arresting imagery that grounded me in this cherished, hallowed land, and I deeply admire Galanski’s ability to write a book that reads folkloric within its modernity. Magpie Funeral is a poignant lament that stirs the heart — it’s my favorite type of story: one of complexity, compassion, and catastrophic ache.”
-Kalani Pickhart, author of "I Will Die in a Foreign Land"
"Taking the reader along on a journey from post-industrial Pennsylvania to post-communist Poland, The Magpie Funeral carefully explores the ways that people who are supposed to love each other hurt each other instead. Galanski-De León balances tenderness and brutality in each sentence as he constructs a story that will stay with you like a song remembered from your childhood."
-Ben Nadler, author of "The Sea Beach Line"
"Adam Galanski-De León's The Magpie Funeral is a hunter's stew of flavors — the Polish landscape, the burn of cheap alcohol, the flurry of a bird's wing: Sit down with something to sip and dig into this novella, savor it. The Magpie Funeral is a work of connection and loss, an exploration of how the two forever hold hands."
-Daniel A. Hoyt, author of "This Book is Not for You"