Faraway Places Read online

  My father didn’t budge; he just kept standing there in the middle of the yard, fire all around: big, greedy flames going lickety-split, the whole shebang on fire. The color was like a sunset right there in front of you all the time. My father looked young, like he had when he was in the army. He looked scared. I walked over to him and gave him one of the photographs, the one of him kissing my mother at their wedding, but I kept the other one—my favorite. I put that one in my shirt pocket.

  My father stared at the photograph for some time, then at the fire; flames everywhere grew higher. My mother had the Oldsmobile running in neutral.

  The sun began to rise.

  I DIDN’T SAY good-bye to anything when I left. I didn’t cry. The sky was a color I had never seen before and the fire was making me sweat even though I was already way down the road past the last red flag before the house.

  I didn’t look back. I just walked out of the yard and onto the road and headed west because I didn’t want to see the river, or Harold P. Endicott’s house, or where his flag used to snap in the sky. I didn’t want to see that woman Sugar Babe’s lean-to, the one she’d shared with the nigger, or the trees along the river. I didn’t want to see the place up there in the stand of twenty-two cottonwood trees where my swing used to be.

  I could still feel the heat on my back by the second flag. And as that fire burned, the wind was at my back, blowing from that direction it never blew from, but the once.

  The Oldsmobile pulled up next to me on the gravel road. My mother was driving and my father was beside her. I kept on walking and my mother kept driving slow, her eyes on the road, my eyes on the road, her left eye gone that way it gets, not that I looked to see.

  My mother turned on the radio, to the rock-and-roll station. It was my favorite song playing: “Walk, Don’t Run,” by the Ventures.

  I thought about what was lying under that cross, under the manure, wrapped in Old Glory. I wondered if that crucifix was on fire yet, and I wondered if Geronimo was in heaven, or if that, too, was just another illusion. Everything, Mr. Energy had said, everything is an illusion.

  I wondered what the davenport looked like burning, what the hallway looked like burning, and the confirmation certificate, and the picture of the guardian angel. I wondered if the butterflies and the dice burned off the wallpaper first.

  My father opened the car door and put his hand out to me. I walked ahead for a while before I took it and got in the Oldsmobile with them. My mother drove off with us in the car like that, her looking that way in her hat with the pheasant feather, hair sticking out all over, my father in the middle, blood still on his face, staring at me like he had never set eyes on me before; my mother driving and trying to light a Viceroy, me by the window, riding shotgun with “Walk, Don’t Run” turned up high.

  I rolled down the window and rested my arm on the side of the car. I could see myself in the rearview mirror and I watched myself for a while. Then I turned the mirror so I could see what was burning up behind me.

  I took a long look back.

  Framed that way in the mirror, it looked like the photograph of the Industrial Revolution from that book Mr. Hoffman gave me: all that smoke and fire going up into the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sky. For a second I wondered if what I could see back there behind the Oldsmobile could be reflected ahead, so that what was happening back there looked like it was happening up front too. I tried to adjust the mirror to see if I could do that—see forward by reflecting what was back—but it didn’t quite work. When we got to the red flag on the plateau, I stopped looking into the mirror. I stuck my head out the window and turned around.

  The flames were licking up high and wild in the middle of that flat cookie sheet, and in the dawn’s early light, you could see the moon hanging up there dim in the blue infinity, and the sun, a much larger flame, rising in the eastern sky.

  Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts

  Portland, Oregon

  Current Titles

  At Hawthorne Books, we’re serious about literature. We suspected that good writers were being ignored and cast aside as a result of consolidation in the publishing industry, and in 2001 we decided to find these writers and give them a voice. We publish American literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, although we won’t turn down a good international title if we find one. All of our books are published as affordable original trade paperbacks, but feature details not typically found even in casebound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings which will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with French flaps and built-in bookmarks. You can probably buy Hawthorne Books wherever you buy books, or from our Web site (hawthornebooks.com) postpaid* and for a substantial discount. If you like to read, we think you’ll enjoy our books. If you like to write–well, send us something. We’re always looking.

  * Free postage available only for orders shipped within the United States. Sorry about that.

  FINALIST, 2005 OREGON BOOK AWARD

  Core: A Romance

  Kassten Alonso

  Fiction / 208pp / $12.95 / 0-9716915-7-6

  This intense and compact novel crackles with obsession, betrayal, and madness. As the narrator becomes fixated on his best friend’s girlfriend, his precarious hold on sanity deteriorates into delusion and violence in this twenty-first-century retelling of the classic myth of Hades and Persephone.

  “Jump through this Gothic stained-glass window and you are in for some serious investigation of darkness and all of its deadly sins. But take heart, brave traveler, the adventure will prove thrilling.”

  Tom Spanbauer Author of Now is the Hour

  TITLE ESSAY INCLUDED IN BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2006

  501 Minutes to Christ

  Poe Ballantine

  Essays / 174pp / $13.95 / 0-9766311-9-9

  This collection of personal essays ranges from Ballantine’s diabolical plan to punch John Irving in the nose during a literary festival, to the tale of how after years of sacrifice and persistence, Ballantine finally secured a contract with a major publisher for a short story collection that never came to fruition.

  “My soul yearns to know this most entangled enigma. I confess to Thee, O Lord, that I really have no idea what Poe Ballantine is talking about.”

  St. Augustine

  WINNER, BRONZE: FOREWORD’S BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR LITERARY FICTION

  Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire

  Poe Ballantine

  Fiction / 376pp / $15.95 / 0-9766311-1-3

  Edgar Donahoe is back for another misadventure, this time in the Caribbean. When he becomes involved with his best friend’s girl and is stalked by murderous island native Chollie Legion, even Cinnamon Jim, the medicine man, is no help—it takes a hurricane to blow Edgar out of the mess.

  “This second novel … initially conjures images of Lord of the Flies, but then you would have to add about ten years to the protagonists’ ages and make them sex-crazed, gold-seeking alcoholics.”

  Library Journal

  God Clobbers Us All

  Poe Ballantine

  Fiction / 196pp / $15.95 / 0-9716915-4-1

  Set against a decaying San Diego rest home in the 1970s, God Clobbers Us All is the shimmering, hysterical, melancholy account of eighteen-year-old surfer-boy/orderly Edgar Donahoe, who struggles with romance, death, friendship, and an ill-advised affair with the wife of a maladjusted war veteran.

  “Calmer than Bukowski, less portentous than Kerouac, more hopeful than West, Poe Ballantine may not be sitting at the table of his mentors, but perhaps he deserves his own after all.”

  San Diego Union-Tribune

  Things I Like About America

  Poe Ballantine

  Essays / 266pp / $12.95 / 0-9716915-1-7

  These risky personal essays are populated with odd jobs, eccentric characters, boarding houses, buses, and beer. Written with piercing intimacy and self-effacing humor, they take us on a Greyhound journey through small-town America and explore what it means to be human.

 
; “Part social commentary, part collective biography, this guided tour may not be comfortable, but one thing’s for sure: You will be at home.”

  Willamette Week

  WINNER, 2005 LANGUM PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION

  Madison House

  Peter Donahue

  Fiction / 528pp / $16.95 / 0-9766311-0-5

  This novel chronicles Victorian Seattle’s explosive transformation from frontier outpost to metropolis. Maddie Ingram, owner of Madison House, and her quirky and endearing boarders find their lives linked when the city decides to regrade Denny Hill and the fate of their home hangs in the balance.

  “Peter Donahue seems to have a map of old Seattle in his head… And all future attempts in its historical vein will be made in light of this book.”

  David Guterson Author of Snow Falling on Cedars

  Clown Girl Introduction by Chuck Palahniuk

  Monica Drake

  Fiction / 298pp / $15.95 / 0-9766311-5-6

  Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a neighborhood so run-down that drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Using clown life to illuminate a struggle between integrity and economic reality, this novel examines issues of class, gender, economics, and prejudice.

  “The pace of [this] narrative is methamphetamine-frantic, as Drake drills down past the face paint and into Nita’s core … There is a lot more going on here than just clowning around.”

  Publishers Weekly

  So Late, So Soon

  D’Arcy Fallon

  Memoir / 224pp / $15.95 / 0-9716915-3-3

  An irreverent, fly-on-the-wall view of the Lighthouse Ranch, a Christian commune the eighteen-year-old hitchhiker D’Arcy Fallon called home for three years in the mid-1970s, when life’s questions overwhelmed her and reconciling her family past with her future seemed impossible.

  “What would draw an otherwise independent woman to a life of menial labor and subservience? Fallon’s answer is both an inside look at ’70s commune life and a funny, poignant coming of age.”

  Judy Blunt Author of Breaking Clean

  The Tsar’s Dwarf

  Peter H. Fogtdal Translated by Tiina Nunnally

  Fiction / $15.95 / 0-9790188-0-3

  Due out September 2008 Soerine, a female dwarf from Denmark, is given as a gift to the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, during his visit to Copenhagen. Soerine travels to St. Petersburg where she becomes a jester at the Tsar’s functions. She enjoys her new life and falls in love with the Tsar’s favorite dwarf, but disaster strikes in the shape of a priest who wants to “save” her.

  September 11: West Coast Writers

  Approach Ground Zero Edited by Jeff Meyers

  Essays / 266pp / $16.95 / 0-9716915-0-9

  The events of September 11, 2001, their repercussions, and our varied responses to them inspired this collection. By history and geographic distance, the West Coast has developed a community different from the East; ultimately shared interests bridge the distinctions in provocative and heartening ways.

  “September 11: West Coast Writers Approach Ground Zero deserves attention. This book has some highly thoughtful contributions that should be read with care on both coasts, and even in between.”

  San Francisco Chronicle

  Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip

  Mark Mordue

  Travel Memoir / 316pp / $15.95 / 0-9716915-6-8

  A world trip that ranges from a Rolling Stones concert in Istanbul to meetings with mullahs and junkies in Teheran, from a cricket match in Calcutta to an S&M bar in New York, as Mark Mordue explores countries most Americans never see, as well as issues of world citizenship in the twenty-first century.

  “Mordue has elevated Dastgah beyond the realms of the traditional travelogue by sharing not only what he learned about cultures he visited but also his brutally honest self-discoveries.”

  Elle

  FINALIST, 2006 OREGON BOOK AWARD WINNER, SAMUEL GOLDBERG & SONS FICTION PRIZE FOR EMERGING JEWISH WRITERS

  The Cantor’s Daughter

  Scott Nadelson

  Fiction / 280pp / $15.95 / 0-9766311-2-1

  Sympathetic, heartbreaking, and funny, these stories – capturing people in critical moments of transition – reveal our fragile emotional bonds and the fears that often cause those bonds to falter or fail.

  “These beautifully crafted stories are populated by Jewish suburbanites living in New Jersey, but ethnicity doesn’t play too large a role here. Rather, it is the humanity of the characters and our empathy for them that bind us to their plights.”

  Austin Chronicle

  WINNER: 2004 OREGON BOOK AWARD; 2005 GLCA NEW WRITERS AWARD

  Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories

  Scott Nadelson

  Ficion / 230pp / $15.95 / 0-9716915-2-5

  These interrelated short stories are graceful, vivid narratives that bring into sudden focus the spirit and the stubborn resilience of the Brickmans, a Jewish family of four living in suburban New Jersey. This fierce collection provides an unblinking examination of family life and the human instinct for attachment.

  “Focusing on small decisions and subtle shifts, Saving Stanley closely examines the frayed ties that bind. With a fly-on-the-wall sensibility and a keen sense for dramatic restraint, Nadelson is … both a promising writer and an apt documentarian.”

  Willamette Week

  WINNER: 1983 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

  Seaview Introduction by Robert Coover

  Toby Olson

  Fiction / 316pp / $15.95 / 0-9766311-6-4

  This novel follows a golf hustler and his dying wife across an American wasteland. Trying to return the woman to her childhood home on Cape Cod, the pair are accompanied by a mysterious Pima Indian activist and shadowed by a vengeful drug dealer to the novel’s apocalypse on the Seaview Links.

  “Even a remarkable dreamer of nightmares like Nathanael West might have been hard-pressed to top the finale … Unlike any other recent American novel in the freshness of its approach and vision.”

  The New York Times Book Review

  The Well and the Mine Introduction by Fannie Flagg

  Gin Phillips

  Fiction / $15.95 / 0-9766311-7-2

  In 1931 Carbon Hill, Alabama, a small coal-mining town, nine-year-old Tess Moore watches a woman shove the cover off the family well and toss in a baby without a word. The event forces the family to face the darker side of their community and seek to understand the motivations of their family and friends.

  “Gin Phillips is the real thing. The Well and the Mine is a stunning triumph: haunting, lyrical, a portrait of the southern family, a story of the human predicament.”

  Vicki Covington Author of Gathering Home and The Last Hotel for Women

  Leaving Brooklyn Introduction by Ursula Hegi

  Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  Fiction / 168pp / $12.95 / 0-9766311-4-8

  An injury at birth left fifteen-year-old Audrey with a wandering eye and her own way of seeing; her relationship with a Manhattan eye doctor exposes her to the sexual rites of adulthood in this startling and wonderfully rich novel, which raises the themes of innocence and escape to transcendent heights.

  “Stunning. Coming of age is seldom registered as disarmingly as it is in Leaving Brooklyn.”

  New York Times Book Review

  Faraway Places Introduction by A.M. Homes

  Tom Spanbauer

  Fiction / $14.95 / 0-9766311-8-0

  This novel marks the end of childhood for Jake Weber and the beginning of trouble for his family. An innocent swim ends with something far beyond anyone’s expectations: Jake witnesses a brutal murder and is forced to keep quiet, even as the woman’s lover is falsely accused.

  “Forceful and moving … Spanbauer tells his short, brutal story with delicacy and deep respect for place and character.”

  Publishers Weekly

  FINALIST, 2005 OREGON BOOK AWARD

  The Greening of Ben Brown

  Michael Strelo
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  Fiction / 272pp / $15.95 / 0-9716915-8-4

  Ben Brown becomes a citizen of East Leven, Oregon after he recovers from an electrocution that has turned him green. He befriends eighteen-year-old Andrew James and together they unearth a chemical-spill cover-up that forces the town to confront its demons and its citizens to choose sides.

  “Strelow resonates as both poet and storyteller. [He] lovingly invokes … a blend of fable, social realism, wry wisdom, and irreverence that brings to mind Ken Kesey, Tom Robbins, and the best elements of a low-key mystery.”

  The Oregonian

  WINNER, 1987 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

  Soldiers in Hiding Introduced by Wole Soyinka

  Richard Wiley

  Fiction / 194pp / $14.95 / 0-9766311-3-X

  Teddy Maki is a Japanese American jazz musician trapped in Tokyo with his friend, Jimmy Yakamoto, both of whom are drafted into the Japanese army after Pearl Harbor. Thirty years later, Maki is a big star on Japanese TV and wrestling with the guilt over Jimmy’s death that he’s been carrying since the war.

  “Wonderful … Original … Terrific … Haunting … Reading Soldiers in Hiding is like watching a man on a high wire!”

  The New York Times