Search results for ""Black Heron Press""

During the fundamentalist revolution in Iran, a 17-year-old girl is arrested by the Revolutionary Guards. She is not political, but her brother and sister-n-law are, so she is suspect too. She is confined in a former bathhouse with several other women ranging in age from adolescence to elderly, whose mental states vary from the stoic and care-giving to the insane. Based on interviews with several Iranian women who had been imprisoned in such a bathhouse, this novel documents the torment they endured and honors their humanity and courage. Winner of the 2001 Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction.

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The poems in Back Cut are set in the Pacific Northwest, particularly Washington State. The time is immediately after WWII, when the heyday of logging and harvesting razor clams has passed and people eke out a living on what is left of these natural resources. Back Cut is a love story. Through alternating monologues, husband and wife reveal themselves. He is a veteran who fought in Europe and now battles addiction. She has largely withdrawn from family and community. The narrative contrasts the romantic view of the fabled rain forest and mythic ocean with the reality of being human in the Northwest grays and rains. Solitary humans have little power in the face of dominant nature. In these poems husband and wife are dedicated to an abiding love lived out on a fretwork of personal disquiet. The couple's inner thoughts and feelings and the physical environment are detailed with both woe and humor. The poems describe living in a cabin, lighting a wood stove, jarring clams, digging potatoes, helping neighbors, cutting floral greens, sitting in a tavern, and touching each other. To the husband and wife, each sensual detail can be a prick or a joy.

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Strange with Age, by prize-winning poet Sharon Cumberland, explores the gains and losses of the ageing process through the prism of her 95-year-old father, as well as other, wide-ranging subjects concerned with the vagaries and challenges of living. Built around the sonnet cycle "My Father Has Grown Strange with Age," the poems reflect the poet's travels to Rome, Glasgow, Seattle, and San Francisco, and an array of nursing homes, fantasies, and dreams. Cumberland's poems are known for the clarity and accessibility of her voice. They can be understood and appreciated by adolescent and college readers, while mature readers will find a treasure trove of meaning in the clever use of imagery and metaphor. Cumberland is also known for her spirituality in the tradition of Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and Denise Levertov. Her poems explore the mysteries of faith, both in contemporary and biblical settings, without being off-putting to secular readers. Her work is a magic mirror in which the reader can see the extraordinary through the mundanity of daily life. Sandra Cisneros calls Cumberland's poetry "truer than x-ray or photo." Kathleen Flenniken says the Strange with Age offers "truth, consolation, and a lovely sense of humor."

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Lenny Chang, the young protagonist of this autobiographical novel, is transplanted from New York City to a suburb on Long Island, and navigates his fractured family in this new, hostile environment. His alcoholic father, a Navy veteran struggling with his unhappy life, dominates and terrorizes his mother who valiantly tries to keep their family intact. Lenny's older brother drifts away from the turmoil while his younger sister attaches herself to Lenny for safety. As Lenny adjusts to this chaotic world in which the family spirals more and more out of control, he withdraws into himself and his martial arts movies, searching for some kind of solace. However, it isn't until Lenny befriends the local marijuana grower and dealer, Sal, that he begins to see a world beyond his own. This unusual friendship sets Lenny on a path toward independence, and becomes the bedrock on which this young boy moves into adulthood, finding the tools for self-reliance and fortitude that will sustain him throughout his life.

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Wisdom of the Body is a meditation in poetry on the bodiness,-the physicality-of all things: our bodies and how they change, the salmon and their life cycle, trees, flowers, the earth, everything caught in the mystery of time. The book contains a series of poems on the life cycle of Pacific Northwest salmon that was a City of Seattle public arts project, and poems from the libretto of a musical piece by noted composer Janice Gitech, Navigating the Light.

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No Common War is a fictionalized history of the author's family's participation in the abolition movement and the Civil War. The names of key persons and places are real. The Union soldier on the book's jacket is Moreau Salisbury. In 1835 two Salisbury brothers accompany the Great Cheese, a 1,800-pound monstrosity created by the leading citizens of Sandy Creek, New York, to Washington City to promote the town and celebrate New York State. In the nation's capitol, they witness the whipping of a slave on Christmas Day. Mason Salisbury demands to know if the slaver is a Christian, and is struck across the face with the whip. Worse would have happened but for Mason's brother Lorenzo's striking the slaver with the butt of his shotgun. Mason becomes an implacable abolitionist, frequently speaking for the cause and showing his scar. He helps escaped slaves reach Canada. in 1861 his son, Moreau, is at seminary at Cazenovia when Ft. Sumter is fired on. Moreau returns home, telling his father he cannot reconcile "Thou shalt not kill" with killing, even against the abomination of slavery. Moreau's mind is changed when he discovers an escaped slave trying to get to Lake Ontario (four miles from Sandy Creek) and his family shelters the man until he can be transported to Canada. Moreau does not know that Mason, his father, has manipulated his discovery. Afterward, Moreau and his cousin Merrick (Lorenzo's son) join the 24th New York Volunteers, but not before Moreau falls in love with Helen, a local girl. The 24th is billeted outside Washington, held in reserve when the Union and Confederate armies meet at Bull Run, but witness fleeing Union soldiers and disillusioned civilians who went to see a spectacle but discovered war. During the winter the 24th bivouac on the grounds of Robert E. Lee's Arlington, Virginia plantation and venture into Washington for drinking and womanizing. The summer of 1862 is a succession of battles. The 24th meets rebels for the first time at Cedar Mountain. Moreau and Merrick see men killed, smell powder and blood, hear the screams of the wounded. They stand abreast and fire at Confederate soldiers also standing abreast and firing at them. The 24th fights at Groveton, is part of the disastrous charge at the sunken railroad at Second Bull run, fights its way up South Mountain under heavy fire, and then Antietam. The 24th is in the third wave through the cornfield at Antietam. Antietam remains the bloodiest single day in American history. There are almost 22,000 casualties. The cornfield will be crossed and recrossed fifteen times, and when the battle is over a person could walk across it without touching the ground for the bodies. Moreau is shot through the ankle. Merrick receives a Minie ball in the knee. Word of their wounds reaches Sandy Creek. Moreau's and Merrick's fathers go to the battlefield, arriving the day after the end of the battle. They find their sons in among the four acres of wounded. Surgeons are amputating limbs, men are crying out in pain, blood pools under the boards and tables used for surgery. The two fathers talk a surgeon out of amputating their sons' legs. Moreau barely survives the trip home. Merrick dies along the way. At home, Moreau becomes increasingly depressed, angry, distant from his parents, cruel to Helen who has waited faithfully for his return. He becomes addicted to morphine. He considers suicide. There are terrible arguments with Helen, the grief of Moreau's mother whose love cannot reach her son, anger at Mason for supporting the war, and finally a violent father-son confrontation. The family is desperate. Mason tries to find the freed slave, to remind Moreau what he had fought for, but cannot locate him. It is a long, brutal winter. But spring will come, and with it love and trust. The price has been high.

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It is the late 1970s, a period when local television news is changing, but few notice. The Best in the West provides a passport into this world, a world where "journalism" and "journalist" were not yet suspect terms. From the anchorman the audience foolishly loves to the harassed producers, photographers and editors, it is an unlikely but winning team.It is a male club of former newspaper and radio reporters chosen for their experience in getting the news. Only a few women have earned admission. Ellen Peters is one. Tough and cynical, she sees reporting as a job. For the idealistic newcomer Debbie Hanson, it is a vocation, a way to get the truth to the public. While Debbie tries to fit in, Ellen stands back and watches. She is, after all, a reporter.

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Judith Roche's fourth collection of poems, All Fire All Water, consists of four parts. "Rivers Have Memories," the first part, explores nature and our relationship to it. Poems include fish and birds, bees and wolves, storms and the changing of the seasons. Drawing from the Salish Sea, where Roche lives, the Pacific Ocean, and the northern Great Lakes, these poems are steeped in water. But there's plenty of the fire of passion in this collection as well. In "A Bird Caught in the Throat," Roche turns to "The Face of War" and the horrors of unnecessary suffering; e.g., the "blood for oil" the 20th and 21st century have brought us. She writes of a usually well-intentioned friend from her liberal church who says she would torture those who are cruel to animals. In "Hoffa" she invokes a childhood memory of the unthinking pain adults can inflict on children, in this case, James Hoffa (the son, not his famous father) in the 11th grade.In "The Husbands Sweet," a play on suite, she looks back from a great distance to a marriage both painful and beloved. These poems are in turn ironic, playful, rueful, and humorous, but still keep all of the sorrow intact. There are poems of other assignations after the bitter breakup of the marriage.The final section is "We Are Stardust," the title taken from the Joni Mitchell song. These poems pose existential questions and explorations of identity and the possibilities of honest communication with others. Roche has a nonverbal, handicapped son and these poems are informed by some of the frustration of communication with him, other than that infused by profound love. She wonders if we can understand the nonverbal language of other creatures, especially crows, and the possibility of bridging the gaps between us and other sentient beings, including ancient beings. In "Linear B" and "Linear A" she tries to understand ancient Greece, the culture and the people, through what we know of their language. In "Metaphors of Dust," she explores where we come from: "As it turns out, we actually are stardust./ I thought it was a metaphor/ of life and space and time./ Apparently, our materials are 13 million years old./ We are star stuff pondering the story/ told in the life of the stars."Throughout this collection, the poems are infused with the music of the language in careful interplay of assonance and consonance.

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Jake Ahn, burglar and jewel thief, gets involved in a burglary in Seattle that turns violent when his partner tries to doublecross him. Escaping to San Francisco, Jake looks up his brother, Eugene, and finds himself in the middle of Eugene's marital and career problems, while gradually becoming attracted to Eugene's wife, Rachel. The brothers' painful memories of their childhoods are awakened with this visit, while Jake eventually turns back to his criminal pursuits, and involves Rachel. Meanwhile, Jake's ex-partner continues his search for Jake, and the result is a violent convergence of events.

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In 1924 New York, Lil (short for Lillian) Moore, an artist, and Leon Shaffer, an accountant, narrate this Jazz Age story of triangular love, art and its future, willing and unwilling sacrifices, heroes and heroines, dreams, visions and illusions, music, insanity, insomnia, fame and the lack of it, and how each era is similar and different from our own. Lil's patrons, Mr. and Mrs. Becker, have interesting, themed parties at their country home. Their lion, Herbert, is wise and a good companion. Alice Thompson, a talented visual artist, and George Holman, an attractive older man and owner of the 191 Gallery, are loosely based on Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz. Marco, a piano player, and Izzy, an African American singer, are also members of the Bohemian group. Lil's desires and needs, as well as Leon's attraction to her, form the plot, which includes philosophical discussions at a Chinese restaurant Round Table, a women's art exhibition at George's gallery, a beauty contest, Lil's wish to act in moving pictures, a visit to a museum to see King Tut, and swimming in a lake. The novel is studded with historical figures and other characters, including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, a Freudian analyst, gangsters, absurdist artists and art lovers, and Mary Beach, a 191 Gallery assistant with her daughter, a long, white scar, and a criminal husband. 1920s slang, the experience of art creation, psychiatric notes, newspaper advertisements, headlines, articles, reviews of popular cultural events, and current events like the Leopold's and

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The Train to Orvieto, set in Orvieto, Florence, and Milan, Italy, and in the heartland of America, is an intimate story of love, loss, betrayal, and reconciliation that unfolds against an historical background of war and dramatic social change. It is a story enacted by fascinating three-dimensional characters and told by one of them, Fina, a history teacher who warns the reader, "The truth never mattered." It is a story depicting the clash of opposites—the desire for union with another and the need for solitude; loyalty and betrayal; change and tradition; the fatalism of rural Italy and the sense of familial and social duty, as against one's obligations to oneself—and it explores the classic theme of how the consequences of decisions made in youth carry through the remainder of one's life. The Train to Orvieto invites us to consider how much we re able to understand the truths of our own lives and what it costs to accept them.The novel consists of the three parts. The first part concerns Willa, her adventurous mother; the second Losine, Willa's elegant lover; and the third, Fina herself. Together, they compose a cross-cultural family saga of the marriage of Willa, a passionate artist from Ohio, and Gabriel, her possessive husband; and of Fina, a daughter who stands at the center of questions about who we are, what we can know of one another, and whether we can forgive.Part I begins in 1935. Fina's mother, Willa Carver, is determined to leave stifling Erhart, Ohio to become an artist in Italy. Her parents are opposed until her impecunious drawing teacher asks for Willa's hand. Willa is quickly sent to Italy chaperoned by the well-connected Sra. Farnese. The two women meet Gabriele Marcheschi, a soldier from Orvieto, on the train. He eagerly courts Willa and sets their marriage date without asking her. After their wedding, Orvieto's provincial culture presents daunting obstacles to Willa and her artistic ambitions.Part II begins in 1949. Michel Losine is a Milanese jeweler, smuggler, thief, faux archaeologist who specializes in locating people gone missing during WWII. A decade earlier in Germany he evaded capture with help from Fr. Eric, a priest whom he has come to Orvieto to thank for that assistance, albeit belatedly. He encounters Willa by chance. The meeting with Fr. Eric raises questions about faith and truth for Losine, and he also receives an unwelcome warning about Willa.Part III begins in 1968. Fina expects to marry Bruno, Gabriele's assistant, who is widely thought to be a "catch." When she is accepted to university in Milan, both Gabriele and Bruno try to prevent her from going. During the conflict, long-hidden family secrets are revealed. Fina's bitter parting propel her on a journey that leads to more revelations about a past that has imprisoned her entire family.

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Peculiar Honors is a collection of poems about how things appear to be one way, then surprise us by being something else. There is an alternative reality that becomes visible only through the lens of poetry. What seems to be an egg, or a crossing signal, or a child sitting in a shopping cart turns out to be a portal into the unexpected. These poems are about things that seem dire or misconceived-a nephew's death, a detour into the wrong profession-but which are redeemed through reconstruction in poetry. Organized around quotes from Isaac Watts, the poems tackle big questions and small oddities with equal force, starting with Watts' prayer to Let every creature rise and bring/peculiar honors to our King. Each poem is a peculiar honor - a look through the ordinary to those strange, difficult, and triumphant things that poetry reveals.

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In the early 22nd century a benign bureaucracy, located in the city of Alternative Four, is bringing economic development to a world that has eliminated war, racial and sexual discrimination, and engineered an ideal society through drugs and genetic mating. Three regional chairmen share nominal executive power over the planet. The people ratify decisions through the People's TV Assembly, an institution manipulated by the Global Administration Organization. Those threatening this ideal social fabric are either psychologically restructured or sterilized and condemed as Undesirables. It is a bureaucracy that, in fact, manipulates the elected government for its own ends. Then one of its own changes his loyalties.

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In Publishing Lives, publishers from 31 independent presses talk about how they came to publishing and why they stayed ( or didn't), the mistakes they made, their relationships with authors, the problems of growth, definitions of success, why they do or do not seek grants, their relationships with distributors, bookstores, New York and Toronto, and each other. More than just a directory, Publishing Lives presents these publishers as the spiritual heirs of the nineteenth-century founders of the great New York houses.

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A city, three lives, four decades, poems, drugs, booze, hippies, love, lust, loss - just keep moving. Some relationships linger across decades and continents, no matter how much individuals change. The links between Patrick, Joanna, Daisy, and San Francisco, though stretched, never snap. San Francisco and the Bay Area are at the heart of this story about three lives evolving over 40 years. When Patrick discovers San Francisco in the summer before the Summer of Love, he is old enough to be drafted for Vietnam, but too young to buy beer. His innocence extends from women to psychedelics. The city will tutor him. Joanna is a Bolinas poet, Daisy her 10-year-old daughter. In a world of lost families, they invent a simulacrum. The city is not just streets and seascapes, but events and the people drawn to and shaped by it. It is North Beach and the Mothers of Invention, City Lights Bookstore and LSD, Hammett's after-midnight fog and the Golden Gate. Patrick leaves and returns, leaves and retur

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The Drum Tower is Farnoosh Moshiri's fourth work of fiction concerned with the deleterious effects of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This novel, told by a mentally ill, 16-year-old girl, depicts the fall of Drum Tower, the house of a family descended from generations of War Ministers. Rich in characters-Talkhoon, who struggles to control the winds she hears inside her head and who tells the story; Assad, a man made evil by his love for her; Anvar Angha, Talkhoon's grandfather who has devoted his life to writing a book about the Simorgh (the mythical bird of knowledge; the Persian Phoenix) but never completes it; Soraya, Talkhoon's mother, whom we never meet but about whom myriad and contradictory stories abound-and rich in family secrets, this novel chronicles the early days of the revolution, the ruthlessness and opportunism of the competing factions, the rise of the Revolutionary Guard, the chaos and murder in the streets of Tehran, the arrests and executions, as experienced by the members of this family. The Drum Tower may be compared, favorably, to Gone with the Wind. It has already won two Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fiction Awards and a Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction. It has been licensed to the United Kingdom's Sandstone Press which will publish the British Commonwealth edition simultaneous with the Black Heron Press edition.

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For Bill, the end has always been in view. His life has seen a series of unlikely extensions. When he was young, he hated his father and contemplated suicide. Later in his life he was diagnosed with leukemia and expected to die within months. Bill's childhood was spent on a communal evangelical mission, but eventually Bill began to question his parents' strict religious beliefs. His father reacted with violence and Bill felt trapped between the dishonesty of trying to conform to his parents' beliefs and the conviction that he was doomed to hell for questioning them. Eventually he provokes his father into a confrontation that leads to an outcome that redefines their relationship and alters the course of both of their lives. By midlife, Bill has been married for twenty years and has his own family. The challenges he has faced at sea as chief engineer on tugboats have helped him heal. His thoughts of suicide have faded. His father's recent descent into Alzheimer's Disease has created an avenue for the reconciliation the two have worked on for years. Then, unexpectedly, a story emerges about his father, involving his sister, and Bill is confronted once again with the dark side of his father's personality.

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In the Spider's Web is set in Ash Meadow, a prison for children in Washington State. The story centers on Caitlin Weber, a girl who, in collusion with her mother and four other children, murdered her mother's employer. While the murder is briefly depicted, it is with what happens afterward to two of the perpetrators, particularly Caitlin, that the story is primarily focused. Arrested less than a week following the murder, Caitlin and her best friend, Sonia, are charged as adults and each sentenced to 22 years in prison. Caitlin was 13 years old; Sonia was 14 years and one week old. Neither had been in legal trouble before. Upon sentencing, they were sent to Ash Meadow where they would stay until they turned 18. Then they would be transferred to Purdy, a prison for adult women, to serve the remainder of their sentences. In the Spider's Web focuses on Caitlin's experience in Ash Meadow and on her relationship with Jerry, her rehabilitation counselor (and the author of this book). Part I of the book provides the reader with a feel for the prison environment that awaits Caitlin, and introduces the reader to the staff and inmates of the Maximum Security unit where Caitlin will live for most of her time in Ash Meadow. Part I also introduces the reader to the relationships between staff, and between staff and the administrators who govern the prison, which relationships will have an effect on Caitlin. Part II begins with Caitlin's arrival at the prison and the start of her relationship with Jerry. The relationship is rocky at first, because Jerry has the same name and is around the same age as the man Caitlin helped to kill. Although Jerry does not know this at first, Caitlin is effectively haunted by her victim. She is assailed by guilt over what she did, and anger toward her mother whose idea the murder was. She struggles with depression and has contemplated suicide. She wants t deny responsibility for her role in the murder and resents Jerry for bringing up the past when she wants to forget it. But as their relationship progresses, they develop respect and even love for each other, she for him because he does not judge her and because she senses that in some way he is like her; he for her because, despite her sometimes feeling overwhelmed by prison life, something in her insists that she keep trying to better herself, to make life tolerable for herself even in confinement. He is the surrogate for the father who abandoned her when she was small, and she is the daughter he lost when he was divorced. Eventually Caitlin is transferred to the adult prison at Purdy and Jerry resigns from his job. In an epilogue, the reader sees that their relationship, while changed, continues. Leonard Chang, author of Triplines and Over the Shoulder , provides this testimonial: "In the Spider's Web takes a penetrating look into the lives of juvenile prisoners caught in their traumatized circumstances and struggling to maintain a semblance of normalcy. Jerome Gold has transformed his years of experience as a rehab counselor into a riveting and important narrative, offering insight into a difficult world that is at times harrowing as well as deeply moving. This is a resonant and significant book." Note: In the Spider's Web is the second book to be published concerning the author's experience as a counselor in Ash Meadow. The first book was published under the title Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility. A third book is underway.

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“The Moral Life of Soldiers: the American Education of a People’s Army Officer” is a novel-as-memoir related by an elderly officer from the People’s Army of Viet Nam, recalling his experience in the American army’s Special Forces before the Vietnam War. The story is an investigation into a soldier’s decision to take up arms against his former comrades. On another level, it is about the relations between men, and between men and women. And it is about the costs of love that one must sometimes pay. The novella, “Paul’s Father,” is set in Georgia just before school integration in the South. It focuses on a white family relocated to Georgia from the North, and the moral compromises they must make to live among their white neighbors, and the compromises they resist making.

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Dreams of escape from her privileged but empty life are only fantasies until Kristen finds a Canadian birth certificate under her mother's jewelry box. Kristen has no memories of her early childhood or her biological father. Her stepdad controls her secretive mother, and Kristen cuts on herself. Even her best friend, Natalie, doesn't know she is haunted by thoughts of suicide. The questions raised by the birth certificate are so unsettling that Kristen decides to run away.Corey was alone the night that Kristen ran away. He has a past and he is known as a trouble maker. He is blamed by both the authorities and kids in school for having murdered Kristen, though her body has not been found. Even his mother believes he is guilty. Natalie, who has her own reasons to despise Corey, grieves for Kristen and also blames Corey.But Kristen has crossed into Canada and is making a new life for herself, unaware what is happening in her absence back in Washington state. She finds a kind of peace she's never experienced, until what started as an innocent relationship with an older man becomes dangerous. Now, stalked by a real predator, she must decide whether to stay and resolve her new problem or return home and confront her former life.The three main characters tell their stories separately as first-person written responses to an English class assignment to keep a personal journal. Each struggles to face life with integrity while entangled in a web of difficult situations. To triumph, each must confront the challenge of forgiveness.

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Tulip, a dachshund puppy, spots a butterfly outside her yard and runs after it. Stella, Tulip's mom, sees her and goes after her. In a moment they are lost. So begins their adventure. They meet a wise pug who puts them on the path to find Shona, a lady who has a rescue home for lost or abandoned dogs. They meet an Irish wolfhound who is homeless and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who was once held in a puppy mill. A compassionate story that touches on abandoned pets, puppy farms, the value of microchipping, and shows animals' love for one another, Stella and Tulip is as entertaining as it is heartwarming.

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Crossings takes an unflinching look at the lives of Korean immigrants, legal and illegal, in the San Francisco Bay Area. This novel centers on Sam, a widower, who finds himself in debt to a local gangster and Unha, an illegal immigrant working at a nightclub. Intertwined with their lives are the lives of other characters-family members, other immigrants, gangsters. Together they form a portrait of a community struggling to better itself. When Unha rebels against the stringent demands placed on her, she is kidnapped and and trafficked into prostitution and Sam is determined to save her.An ensemble novel, [i]Crossings[/i] is a mosaic of stories about the American dream.

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The novel takes place at the end of the Eisenhower administration and the beginning of the Kennedy era. It is set in Orange County, California. Bob and Jen are the children of parents who entered the middle class after World War II. Life for these kids has not reached the level of affluence the professional class knows. Life, especially for middle-class (white) kids is often boring. Anticipating life after high school, kids are concerned with finding work or going to college or into the military. Much of the sex is erotic, although other parts read more clinically (as in: Oh, I see. If I do this, he'll do that. Or, if I do that, she'll do this.) If, for Bob and Jen, sex is at first a way of exploring the adult world, it soon becomes a way to defy the world. But the world intrudes. Bob worries about money, the recession, and finding and holding a job. The book emphasizes the kinds of unskilled-labor jobs Bob finds, the people he meets, and his anxiety when he is out of work. While sex with Jen and his growing love for her are immeasurably important to Bob, so is his desire to write and travel, "to learn how the world works." Jen and that imagined life are rivals. Bob knows this, but wants both. Jen doesn't see herself as a rival to Bob's future, but as a part of it. Even more than Bob does, she sees herself as a sexual being. Both characters grow increasingly complex as they gain experience of the world. While their relationship ends, or appears to end, each of them moving toward a different way of living in the world, we can say, ultimately, not that love conquers all, but that it endures, whether or not we will it, despite the world and despite ourselves. This is a pre-feminist novel in that while feminism has not yet become a movement in the years most of this story occurs, many of the issues that feminism is concerned with are depicted in rudimentary form in this book.

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Trucks, an aging boxer, breaks his daughter, Claudia, out of a children's home in Wisconsin one night during the dead of winter. She is a winsome, feisty little girl who tries to hold her father to account, and Trucks loves her unconditionally. He gives her used hearing aids to help with her deafness, and they begin hitchhiking to Nevada. Claudia's mother, an addict, has disappeared and is probably dead. Their first ride takes them to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They have only $30. They meet a number of people on their journey, including June, a woman about Trucks' age who was abandoned by her husband, and Gerald, an older rancher in Montana who offers them a place to stay, an offer Trucks refuses. Trucks is unable to find work, except for boxing—he is trapped in an activity for which he is no longer suited. Depressed, confused, and his mind no longer reliable, Trucks steals a car so that he and Claudia can drive east.

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Milepost 27 showcases the poet's examination of the effects of climate change. From the bone altar of a Native American shaman who prays over disturbed land honoring deceased ancestors to the phantom forests of New Mexico where a ponderosa forest once thrived, Stablein has an eye for surreal environments, especially the drought-parched firescapes that have become increasingly common across the globe.A number of Stablein's poems recall her post-Beat travels to Asia in the 60s where she studied art for six years. With a keen eye for detail, her poems evoke the rich cultural and spiritual life of people she met and places she lived, "from New York to Nepal; from Juarez to Varanasi; from Kathmandu to farflung rivers and seashores."Her most poignant poems evoke her grief after the unexpected, accidental death of her son. From despair to acceptance, the arc of the book weaves up and down, in, out and around the familiar American obsession with the open road. Ultimately her lonesome journeys down the Jornado del Muerto adn the Route 66 caminos give way to acceptance, appreciation, and joy.

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What would you do if strange letters began appearing in your mail box? Read them? When the unnamed narrator of this novel opens misdirected letters, he enters the harsh, disturbing world of Farrel Gorden. Gorden, an assistant manager in a sporting goods store near New Hampshire, hates his new Korean- American boss, and is on the verge of losing control of his hatred. As we watch the narrator reconstruct the recent events in Gorden's life, including an affair with his boss' wife and the wrenching consequences that follow, the paths of these two disparate characters- letter reader and letter writer- converge violently as each intrudes in the life of the other. This is a story that blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary, the violent and the mundane, and negotiates the exterior world and interior workings of a vengeful mind.

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Anna Begins is a pair of Young Adult novellas, each about a girl and a boy around seventeen years old. In the title story, Melissa has an eating disorder, an absent best friend, a disconnected mother, her first sexual experience, and a story to write about all of it. Finding peer support in telling her own story, she decides to try to live the plot she is trying to write. A Million Miles Up, the second story, is an upside-down tale of teenage love. Scott and Elly try to navigate their junior year in high school. Scott wants to be famous and takes up celebrity-scale drinking. Elly just wants to be happy, but must deal with an abusive father. As both of them fall through the cracks at their school, they approach an ending neither of them can return from: Elly decides to kill her father. The two stories in Anna Begins explore the humor, frustration and depth of pain the come with the most awkward years of life: the teens.

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