NAMELESS COWFISH:
THE YEARS BETWEEN THE STATIONS
NAMELESS COWFISH:
THE YEARS BETWEEN THE STATIONS
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THE YEARS BETWEEN THE STATIONS
Nameless Cowfish: The Years Between The Stations is a work of literary fiction by David Kitzmiller following Jade, a young man from Sheridan, Indiana, searching for where he belongs. With a passion for writing but no clear outlet for it, he turns to music, building a garage band from borrowed instruments and uncertain ambition. What begins as an escape gradually becomes something larger, carrying him through decades shaped by friendship, family, heartbreak, modest success, and the difficult choices that follow a life devoted to creating.
Spanning more than thirty years across the small towns and cornfields of the American Midwest, the novel traces several forms of love: loyalty between friends, complicated family ties, the pull of music, and Jade’s evolving connection with Christine, a relationship marked as much by timing and silence as affection. Along the way come wrong turns, unexpected humor, losses that linger, and moments capable of altering a life long after they pass.
More than a story about chasing dreams, Nameless Cowfish: The Years Between The Stations explores identity, connection, and the realization that what ultimately shapes us is often different from what we believed we were searching for.
About the NOVEL
About the NOVEL
Across garages, bars, back roads, rehearsals, breakups, and years that seem to accelerate without warning, Jade learns that becoming the person he imagined is rarely straightforward. Success arrives unevenly. Friendships deepen and fracture. Love changes shape. The things meant to save us sometimes become the things we leave behind.
Nameless Cowfish: The Years Between The Stations moves through moments of humor, disappointment, devotion, addiction, recovery, and quiet reinvention without losing sight of hope. The novel lingers in ordinary places and small decisions, tracing how lives are built over time rather than singular turning points.
At its center is a question carried through music, family, friendship, and romance: What remains when the life we planned gives way to the life we actually have? Through Jade’s search for direction, Kitzmiller explores the distance between ambition and contentment, and the unexpected ways people become anchors for one another.
Themes and Style
Themes and Style
Finding a place to belong: Identity, purpose, and growing up within the limits and comforts of a small Midwest town.
Love beyond romance: Friendship, family, music, and relationships shaped by timing, distance, and loyalty.
The uneven path of becoming: Ambition, mistakes, addiction, recovery, humor, and the slow work of change.
Creation as connection: Music and writing as outlets for expression, escape, and understanding.
Kitzmiller’s style blends literary fiction with emotional immediacy, balancing intimate character moments against the passing decades that shape them. Humor and heartbreak often exist side by side, reflecting lives rarely defined by one emotion at a time. The result is a story grounded in ordinary places and imperfect people, where hope persists even when certainty does not.
Related Works
Related Works
Explore the Dealing with the Toaster series, including A Step Away from Bathing with a Toaster and the companion poetry collections Poems from the Toaster, for a full picture of David Kitzmiller’s creative and emotional journey.
Purchase This NOVEL
Purchase This NOVEL
You can purchase A Step Away from Bathing with a Toaster through major retailers:
Praise for Nameless Cowfish:
The Years between the stations
Praise for Nameless Cowfish:
The Years between the stations
“Nameless Cowfish: The Years Between The Stations understands something many coming-of-age novels miss: the people who shape us often arrive disguised as bandmates, small-town routines, or years we assume we’ll outgrow. Kitzmiller writes with warmth, humor, and hard-earned tenderness.” Cedar & Lantern Literary, Naomi Mercer
“Part Midwest music story, part literary meditation on friendship, love, and becoming, Kitzmiller’s novel unfolds with the uneven rhythm of real life. Characters stumble, drift, reconnect, and keep searching. The result feels deeply human.” Paper Fields Review, Julian Cross
“Where other novels chase dramatic transformation, Nameless Cowfish lingers in quieter moments: rehearsals, wrong turns, unresolved feelings, and the slow accumulation of choices that become a life. A hopeful story without easy answers.” Reader, Evelyn Price
“Kitzmiller captures the strange balance between heartbreak and humor with unusual confidence. Music may be the thread running through the novel, but its true subject is belonging, and the people who unknowingly save us along the way.” Longform Fiction Journal, Adrian Wells
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