In this episode 231, we visit with Allie Coker, author of The Last Resort, a novella told “in voices,” small vignettes of characters residing in a sanitarium who exist mostly in their own minds.

As we shift from each small perspective—patients, caregivers, security—we begin to see the Last Resort Sanitarium come into view more clearly, especially the experience of a young, enigmatic woman Sandy and her alter-ego Lex.

Alan Michael Parker, author of Cry Uncle and Whale Man, had this to say about the book, “Allie Coker’s searing and searching The Last Resort is a polyphonic wonder, a choir of soaring and anguished voices. Everyone’s locked up here: the suicidal patients together with the shift-work caregivers, and we hear from them all. Whether ideational or lucky, ‘other-siders’ who have experienced death and returned, we’re all at risk in this terrific little novella. As #19145 warns us about being here (with these patients, and in our own heads), ‘It’s hard to outrun the past when you’re still creating it.’ What a stunning, harrowing debut work of fiction.”