Desert Gothic
Don Waters
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
This powerful debut collection, set in the light-filled deserts of Nevada and Arizona, introduces a darkly inventive new voice. Like an early Richard Ford, Don Waters writes with skill, empathy, and an edgy wit of worlds not often celebrated in contemporary literature. In Desert Gothic, Waters unleashes a wild and gritty cast and points them down paths of reckoning, where the characters earn the grace of their hard-won wisdom.Set in bars, mortuaries, nursing homes, truck stops, and the "poverty motels that encircled downtown's casino corridor," Waters's ten stories are full of misfit transients like Julian, a crematorium worker who decorates abandoned urns to create a "lush underground island," and the instant Mormon missionary Eli, a hapless divorcé who "always likes people better when they're a little broken." Limo drivers, ultra-marathoners, vagabonds, and a distraught novelist-to-be populate the pages of these gritty stories.
Product Details
Price
$18.40
Publisher
University of Iowa Press
Publish Date
September 15, 2007
Pages
152
Dimensions
5.7 X 9.15 X 0.5 inches | 0.01 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781587296246
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Don Waters was born and raised in Reno, Nevada, and now lives in Berkeley, California. He's received numerous honors for his writing, including fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Jentel Foundation, as well as the McGinnis-Ritchie Award from the Southwest Review. His stories have been published in such venues as Epoch, StoryQuarterly, the Kenyon Review, the Southwest Review, the Santa Monica Review, zyzzyva, the Cimarron Review, and Grain.
Reviews
" The prose in this wonderful collection of stories is as sneaky as the landscape it depicts. It is also as harsh and as beautiful. The characters here are weird and remarkably drawn. I read these stories with much pleasure." — Percival Everett
" Here are ten beautifully rendered worlds, ten opportunities for the reader to be transformed. You'll want to own a first edition of "Desert Gothic," It will only go up in value as Don Water's career soars. He's the real deal." -John McNally, author, "The Book of Ralph "and "America's Report Card"
" Don Waters writes with an uncompromising eye about the slyly grim yet fascinating journeys of characters who long ago decided they’ ve had enough of second chances. They hold on at the sunburnt edges of Nevada and Arizona, somewhere just beyond the madness of tract home boomtowns and senior citizen communities merely waiting rooms for death, out there just barely still in range of the tinny noise of casinos. In Waters’ s splendid stories, these are the last places left where they can grip, fast, to the persevering essences of humanity" -Douglas Unger, author, "Leaving the Land" and "Looking for War and Other Stories"
"The prose in this wonderful collection of stories is as sneaky as the landscape it depicts. It is also as harsh and as beautiful. The characters here are weird and remarkably drawn. I read these stories with much pleasure." Percival Everett"
"Here are ten beautifully rendered worlds, ten opportunities for the reader to be transformed. You'll want to own a first edition of "Desert Gothic." It will only go up in value as Don Water's career soars. He's the real deal."-John McNally, author, "The Book of Ralph "and "America's Report Card"
"Don Waters writes with an uncompromising eye about the slyly grim yet fascinating journeys of characters who long ago decided they ve had enough of second chances. They hold on at the sunburnt edges of Nevada and Arizona, somewhere just beyond the madness of tract home boomtowns and senior citizen communities merely waiting rooms for death, out there just barely still in range of the tinny noise of casinos. In Waters s splendid stories, these are the last places left where they can grip, fast, to the persevering essences of humanity"-Douglas Unger, author, "Leaving the Land" and "Looking for War and Other Stories""
" Here are ten beautifully rendered worlds, ten opportunities for the reader to be transformed. You'll want to own a first edition of "Desert Gothic," It will only go up in value as Don Water's career soars. He's the real deal." -John McNally, author, "The Book of Ralph "and "America's Report Card"
" Don Waters writes with an uncompromising eye about the slyly grim yet fascinating journeys of characters who long ago decided they’ ve had enough of second chances. They hold on at the sunburnt edges of Nevada and Arizona, somewhere just beyond the madness of tract home boomtowns and senior citizen communities merely waiting rooms for death, out there just barely still in range of the tinny noise of casinos. In Waters’ s splendid stories, these are the last places left where they can grip, fast, to the persevering essences of humanity" -Douglas Unger, author, "Leaving the Land" and "Looking for War and Other Stories"
"The prose in this wonderful collection of stories is as sneaky as the landscape it depicts. It is also as harsh and as beautiful. The characters here are weird and remarkably drawn. I read these stories with much pleasure." Percival Everett"
"Here are ten beautifully rendered worlds, ten opportunities for the reader to be transformed. You'll want to own a first edition of "Desert Gothic." It will only go up in value as Don Water's career soars. He's the real deal."-John McNally, author, "The Book of Ralph "and "America's Report Card"
"Don Waters writes with an uncompromising eye about the slyly grim yet fascinating journeys of characters who long ago decided they ve had enough of second chances. They hold on at the sunburnt edges of Nevada and Arizona, somewhere just beyond the madness of tract home boomtowns and senior citizen communities merely waiting rooms for death, out there just barely still in range of the tinny noise of casinos. In Waters s splendid stories, these are the last places left where they can grip, fast, to the persevering essences of humanity"-Douglas Unger, author, "Leaving the Land" and "Looking for War and Other Stories""
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