Natives in Exile
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.66 (825 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0692494588 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 198 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
“Solero is the faded name on the bullet-pocked road sign that flips past your windshield at 80 MPH (and 100 degrees in the shade) on the way to Las Vegas. Dirk Harman’s critically acclaimed first novel chronicles the parallel lives of several unfortunate souls stranded by history, circumstances and plain old bad living in a slowly dying Mojave desert town. Of this welcome-to-nowhere town—easily bypassed and quickly forgotten—Dirk Harman has drawn a portrait so vivid, so harsh, so funny, so merciful, that it’s on my literary map for good” —Ursula Le Guin, Capra Press “Getting inside a dozen wildly different characters, from native rattlesnake shaman to itinerant rodeo clown to unrequited coffee shop waitress, Harman himself is shape-shifter and shaman.” —Peter Wild, The Sonora Review “Harman’s prose has the forlorn authenticity of a distant train whistle in the night.” —Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times. Through a series of linked stories told in a lyrical and often humorous voice, Harman portrays a piece of American culture that has been abandoned and left to the elements, like postcards from a ghost town. Once a thriving mining community and bustling railroad junction, Solero, California has fallen on hard times, due mainly to a careless error made by a hung-over civil engineer while mapping out a route for the new interstate
great fiction, with social commentary as a sideline. Excellent. Jim Bennett This is an unusual, but very readable, book. The descriptions are fabulous, for example: “the soothing music in back of each clattering noise like soft leather on a sharp wooden edge.” and “Ground heat sweltered over the flatness of the railyards, giving the rusty collection of abandoned freight cars a submerged appearance, like an aquarium shipwreck.”You will find many new names of plants and trees, all of which are correct. If you are not an American, you will need to know that VFW means Veterans of Foreign Wars, and is a sort of legion buil. iCrew Rick said Five Stars. Good