 This book reaches across the green felt layout and tells the story of those on the other side. Nonfiction    |
WorksDummy Up and Deal
Less brief description goes here  Release date September 2007 Minimal Damage
". . .stories told with understated compassion and unexpected flashes of humor"--Sept. Publishers Weekly The six stories and one novella in this collection range from stark realism to satire and represent an array of conflicts, some resolved, some not. Most depict men who served in war and now face a different kind of turbulance as civilians. Some, like the self-silenced and enigmatic Mr. K in "Ground Work", achieve finacial or some other degree of success but are otherwise living in a void. Pate in "Snake Boy" arrives stateside with a herion addiction only to end up in bondage to a charlatan faith healer. Some are seekers searching for compassion in others or finding it in themselve. All struggle to break out of their isolation. Talk to Me, James Dean
"Gripping stories ... that collectively brings to life the desperate drive that pushes teenagers to the risky edge of survival." --Midwest Book Review "H. Lee Barnes, with the publication of Talk to Me, James Dean, establishes himself as one of the finest writers of short stories in the contemporary west." --Martin Naparsteck, The Salt Lake Tribune The Lucky
"Barnes is as knowledgeable about Nevada history and casino gaming operations as he is about the little virtue and great vice in the human heart. The result [The Lucky] is a vigorous tale of high hopes and low self-esteem featuring characters adrift in a sea of bad choices and selfish behavior ... Barnes’s engaging voice and quirky plotting keep the reader turning pages." --Publishers Weekly Gunning for Ho, Vietnam stories
"In the collection's finest piece, the harrowing novella "Tunnel Rat," talk in the jungle invariably centers on home. Fine lyric descriptions of the landscape's beauty ("diaphanous thermals shimmered where the sun bore down on the emerald paddies in the lowlands") make the carnage somehow unreal; yet "they measured days by casualties." A father in "A Return" grasps vainly for memories of his son, an MIA for 15 years, whose body is belatedly coming home. Resignedly, he understands that "the world ends one life at a time. Who decides when a boy's world ends?" --Publishers Weekly "This collection is a testament to the humanity of the men who went to Vietnam." --Boston Review |
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