“Few writers working today care as deeply for their characters as Dustin M. Hoffman. In these stories, it is possible to be both dignified and kind of a mess, to make terrible mistakes for the noblest of reasons, to find yourself in troubles whose causes you know you should barely let yourself understand. These stories are deeply human, keen to the everyday wonders of romance, family, and work.” — Matt Bell, author of A Tree or a Person or a Wall

“In No Good for Digging, Dustin M. Hoffman blends the blue-collar Midwest with the magical and surreal. These stories explore the lives of postmen, salesmen, kids attending punk shows, and teenagers watching planes take off, as readily as they liken interstates to intestines and hairlines to crop fields. Hoffman’s collection is at once humorous, poetic, poignant and wistful, and an ardent love letter to the Midwest.” — Anne Valente, author of The Desert Sky Before Us

“These stories are brutal, beautiful, and full of heart. Hoffman feels like a Sherwood Anderson for our time, a writer who not only understands our secret sadnesses and longings but who brings them to the surface with an unwavering sense of compassion.” — Seth Fried, author of The Municipalists

“An elegy to the theory and practice and meaning of work, these are stories not afraid to get their hands dirty. By turns solemn and puckish, desperate and playful, with perfect tone and details, No Good for Digging brings to life and honors (and sometimes betrays) those whose lot it is in life to dig, to hammer, to tear down, to build up, to dream, to fly. Dustin M. Hoffman evokes the quiet need, the deep grace, and the steady hope we all have to find something transcendent in our labors.” — William Lychack, author of Cargill Falls

“No Good for Digging” is further proof that Dustin Hoffman is a writer who deserves our attention.  With stories focused mainly on working class people struggling in a Michigan hit hard by the Great Recession, the slightly surreal quality of many of them remind one of a cross between Steinbeck and Barthes, a perfect way to approach the strange, frightening atmosphere of our politically unstable times.” — Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time & The Heavenly Table