Description
Book SynopsisFrom the author of the critically-acclaimed novel,
I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them, Jesse Goolsby's
Acceleration Hours is a haunting collection of narratives about families, life, and loss during America's twenty-first-century forever wars. Set across the mountain west of the United States, these fierce, original, and compelling stories illuminate the personal search for human connection and intimacy. From a stepfather's grief to an AWOL soldier and her journey of reconciliation to a meditation on children, violence, and hope.
Acceleration Hours is an intense yet necessary portrayal of the many voices living in a time of perpetual war.
Trade ReviewIn
Acceleration Hours, Jesse Goolsby relies on well-established literary traditions to provide his unique take on important human themes. Through the tradition of wartime literature, he considers death and faith, pain and anguish, and fear and hope. Through the literature of the West, he explores self-sufficiency, individualism, and survival. In his entirely original and intriguing execution, Goolsby manages to explore these often hard and ugly truths through the lives of his fascinating characters, and he does so in a way that is empathetic without being sentimental." —Caleb Cage, author of
Desert Mementos"
Acceleration Hours is a live-wire collection full of characters who aren't afraid to bare their souls. With a deft hand, Goolsby carries us through their struggles at home and away, cementing himself as a powerful new talent in the process." — Sara Novic, author of
Girl at War"Jesse Goolsby's stories cut like knives: brutal and bloody, shocking and thrilling, they profane by telling the truth. Goolsby's thoroughly American characters run from war at home to war abroad; they (we?) are realists and pessimists, the disillusioned and a few of the dangerously deluded.
Acceleration Hours should haunt a nation that has for a generation now sent the least among us around the globe to dominate and humiliate the least among Them—all in service of an empire estranged from its ideals. This collection should wake us up; it has the power to change us." —Dan O'Brien, author of
War Reporter and
The Body of an AmericanTable of Contents
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Anchor & Knife
- We Drag Our Feet near the Stingrays
- Feed
- Tendons
- Sometimes Kids Bleed for No Reason
- God's Zipper
- Begin with Serenity
- All Saints' Eve
- Waiting for Red Dawn
- Hindu Kush
- Waist Deep at Hapuna
- Acceleration Hours
- Why I Listen to My Children Breathe
- Sovereignty
- What My Dead Wife Should Know
- Benevolence
- Ishi Wilderness
- Not an Emergency
- Green Lungs, Purple Hearts, Orange Kidneys
- The Price of Everything
- About the Author
