University of Iowa Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-1-58729-775-5 | Paper: 978-1-58729-624-6 Library of Congress Classification PS3623.A8688D47 2007 Dewey Decimal Classification 813.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
What to Do with the Dead
Sheets
Mr. Epstein and the Dealer
Dan Buck
Mineral and Steel
Blood Management
Holiday at the Shamrock
The Bulls at San Luis
Little Sins
Mormons in Heat
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University of Iowa Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-1-58729-775-5 Paper: 978-1-58729-624-6
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
What to Do with the Dead
Sheets
Mr. Epstein and the Dealer
Dan Buck
Mineral and Steel
Blood Management
Holiday at the Shamrock
The Bulls at San Luis
Little Sins
Mormons in Heat
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE