In seven and a half interlinked stories, Aaron Kreuter’s Rubble Children tackles Jewish belonging, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Zionism, love requited and unrequited, and cannabis culture, all drenched in suburban wonder and dread. Sometimes realist, sometimes not, the book revolves around Kol B'Seder, a fictional Reform synagogue in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. In these stories, the locked basement room in the home of the synagogue’s de facto patriarch opens onto a life-altering windfall; visions of an omnipotent third temple terrify; rhythms of the Jewish and scholastic year collide in bong rips and hash hits; alternate versions of Israel/Palestine play out against domestic drama. In the title story, a group of Jewish girls obsessed with the Holocaust discover that they are far from the only people who live in the rubble of history. Engaging, funny, dark, surprising, Rubble Children is a scream of Jewish rage, a smoky exhalation of Jewish joy, a vivid dream of better worlds.

Aaron Kreuter is the author of the short story collection You and Me, Belonging (2018) and the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs (2016). His writing has appeared in places such as Grain Magazine, The Puritan, The Temz Review, and The Rusty Toque. Kreuter lives in Toronto and is a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University. Shifting Baseline Syndrome is his second book of poems.

Aaron Kreuter's profile page

“The stories simultaneously ground themselves in the immediate, lived experience of the Jewish community in Toronto and leap beyond it into possible futures, following flights of imagination that curl back on the present, revealing its hidden dimensions. Rubble Children breaks what is essentially new ground for the Canadian short story. Urgent, topical, and contemporary, it makes for genuinely exhilarating reading.” Aaron Schneider, author of The Supply Chain

"Although Rubble Children is an important book given the current climate, it’s Kreuter’s characterization and storytelling abilities that make it a must-read. These are stories of growing, healing and understanding, powerfully told and skillfully wrought. History, culture, religion and politics play a part in each of these stories, but at the end of the day, it’s the humanity of the characters, and the vagaries of their nature that makes Rubble Children such a compelling read." Jeff Dupuis, The Miramichi Reader, August 10, 2024 [Full review at https://miramichireader.ca/2024/08/rubble-children-by-aaron-kreuter/]

"This book, in its indispensable way, may make some readers uncomfortable as it amplifies voices and conflicting generational narratives around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within its own community.... Kreuter challenges readers to examine their current biases and narratives, succeeding in presenting a complex issue in an accessible and honest way. By doing so, he allows readers to deeply empathize with the characters.... The authentic dialogue of contemporary voices layered with complex emotions draw the reader in and welcome her to join the conversation, regardless of her affiliations or beliefs. Ultimately, Rubble Children invites readers into a nuanced and vital discourse, making it a compelling and thought-provoking read." Britta Stromeyer [Full review at https://brittastromeyer.com/2024/06/24/book-review-rubble-children-by-aaron-kreuter/]

"Rubble Children offers plain-spoken realism, with plots that sometimes levitate from the mundane, employing wildly satirical humor and dystopian flights of fancy." Julia M. Klein, Forward, August 15, 2024 [Full review at https://forward.com/culture/644526/aaron-kreuter-rubble-children-toronto-synagogue-jewish-fiction/]

“In Aaron Kreuter’s Rubble Children, set in affluent Thornhill, Ontario, the war in Gaza manifests obliquely through tense family dinners, high school rivalries, and interminable committee meetings.… Haunting these pages is a foreboding that the suburban idyll will crumble, that the faraway war can no longer be ignored. … In Rubble Children, the world knocks at the door. Will anyone answer?" Richard Joseph, Bookworm / Literary Review of Canada, October 8, 2024

"Aaron Kreuter’s collection of short stories, Rubble Children, explores a complex and multi-faceted Jewish presence in contemporary Canadian society.... This collection of stories is a necessary text." Sara Hailstone, September 1, 2024 [Full review at https://www.sarahailstone.com/book-reviews/rubble-children]

"A solid and provocative collection that needles all the contradictions in one Jewish community north of Toronto. The story ‘Rubble Children’ is jam-packed with scrappiness, turmoil, and revelation." Tamara Faith Berger, author of Yara

"What if the worldview you were raised in turns out to be monstrous? In the stories that form Rubble Children, Aaron Kreuter examines a Jewish community in flux, caught between its historical fealty to Israel and a growing awakening and resistance to it. Rubble Children is a book of great range: at once political, communitarian, empathetic, funny, revolutionary, touching, and hopeful. This is a work that is essential for our moment." Saeed Teebi, author of Her First Palestinian