Burning Fence: A Western Memoir of Fatherhood

Burning Fence: A Western Memoir of Fatherhood Review

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Burning Fence: A Western Memoir of Fatherhood Feature

In Burning Fence, acclaimed novelist Craig Lesley turns his keen eye toward two difficult fathers and an alcohol-damaged Indian foster child, Craig's own "son," Wade. Abandoned by his shell-shocked father, Rudell, Craig grew up with his stepfather, Vern, a tough, controlling railroader. When events turned nasty, Craig, his mother, and his baby sister fled on the night train and arrived at an Indian reservation where his mother found work. Decades later, convinced he would be a better father than Rudell or Vern, Craig takes in the troubled Wade.

But desperation over Wade's violent acts motivates Craig to seek out Rudell in remote Monument, Oregon. Craig hopes his father, a reclusive coyote trapper and poacher, will help raise his disturbed grandson. There Craig meets his colorful half-brother, Ormand, a would-be East Coast hit man, now "born again."

Skillfully capturing the rural humor, rugged characters, and hardscrabble life of Eastern Oregon, Burning Fence presents a searing reflection on fatherhood and offers remarkable insight into the landscape of the Western heart.

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Home Street Home

Home Street Home Review

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Home Street Home Feature

WHAT THE COMMUNITY IS SAYING ABOUT HOME STREET HOME - THE VIRGINIA BEACH CHRONICLES...

I just finished reading the book today! I could not put it down - it was WONDERFUL! I felt like I was there with everyone & everything as it took place. It gave me different insights to things I could not imagine going on. I cried at the end; when you were talking about Little Bear as I knew who you were really talking about." ----- Alice Dagenhardt of "Hope in the Upper Room", Virginia Beach

"...a uniformly rugged but redemptive novel about life among the homeless in Hampton Roads." ----- Bill Ruehlmann, professor emeritus of journalism/communications at Virginia Wesleyan College and book columnist for the Virginia Pilot.

*See the link below to Dr. Ruehlmann's complete review of Home Street Home - The Virginia Beach Chronicles in the August 29, 2011 "Sunday Break" section of the Virginia Pilot.

"She provides an authentic picture from what I know of homelessness on the streets. Her story puts a human face on the whole issue of homelessness."----- Jeffrey Andrews, retired Maring Corps major and president of Hope in the Upper Room, a non-profit devoted to giving the homeless a "hand up", not a "hand out".

"The book is realistic. It's not amatuerish, nor does it seek sympathy. There is definitely a market for this."---- Anne Meek, board secretary for the Cultural Alliance of Greater Hampton Roads

Home Street Home is a work of literary fiction set in the homeless community of the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach. Based on hard facts, it is the reader's ticket for a virtual journey into a parallel universe that is increasingly easy for any of us to fall into these days.

For Dr. William J.Ruehlmann's complete review in the Virginia Pilot, please put the following url into your browser. http://hamptonroads.com/sitesearch?search_term=The+Homeless+Scribe&sa=Search

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The Dirty Truth

The Dirty Truth Review

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The Dirty Truth Feature

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Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure

Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure Review

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Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure Feature

From Chicago to Key West, Cuba to Kenya, Michael Palin takes us around the world in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway.

With his signature wit and indomitable style, bestselling author Michael Palin sets out to explore the rich and vivid territory of Hemingway's life. Inspired by the legendary writer's apetite for travel, Palin experiences Hemingway's fondness for the adventure-filled life firsthand, be it bull-running in Pamplona, fishing for marlin in the Gulf Stream, or drinking daiquiris in Havana. Driven by a fascination for discovering new places and for learning more about a remarkable and complex man, Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure is a unique travelogue and biography of this American hero, whose life and work left an indelible impression on the fast-fading twentieth century.

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Poetry in America (Pitt Poetry Series)

Poetry in America (Pitt Poetry Series) Review

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Poetry in America (Pitt Poetry Series) Feature

Poetry in America offers extravagantly formed lyric and narrative poems that function like works of social realism for our times: hard times, wartime, divorce, times of downturn and dissipated resources. Where, in such times, can poetry emerge, the book asks—and answers—again and again. Largely set in rural places and small towns, these poems are politically committed but deeply sensuous, emotionally complex and compassionate. They take up the everyday in meaningful ways, and deliver it with blunt force, yet not without hope or bright humor.
 

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Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille

Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille Review

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Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille Feature

BEST KNOWN AS THE DIRECTOR of such spectacular films as The Ten Commandments and King of Kings, Cecil B. DeMille lived a life as epic as any of his cinematic masterpieces. As a child DeMille learned the Bible from his father, a theology student and playwright who introduced Cecil and his older brother, William, to the theater. Tutored by impresario David Belasco, DeMille discovered how audiences responded to showmanship: sets, lights, costumes, etc. He took this knowledge with him to Los Angeles in 1913, where he became one of the movie pioneers, in partnership with Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn). Working out of a barn on streets fragrant with orange blossom and pepper trees, the Lasky company turned out a string of successful silents, most of them directed by DeMille, who became one of the biggest names of the silent era. With films such as The Squaw Man, Brewster’s Millions, Joan the Woman, and Don’t Change Your Husband, he was the creative backbone of what would become Paramount Studios. In 1923 he filmed his first version of The Ten Commandments and later a second biblical epic, King of Kings, both enormous box-office successes. Although his reputation rests largely on the biblical epics he made, DeMille’s personal life was no morality tale. He remained married to his wife, Constance, for more than fifty years, but for most of the marriage he had three mistresses simultaneously, all of whom worked for him. He showed great loyalty to a small group of actors who knew his style, but he also discovered some major stars, among them Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, and later, Charlton Heston.

DeMille was one of the few silent-era directors who made a completely successful transition to sound. In 1952 he won the Academy Award for Best Picture with The Greatest Show on Earth. When he remade The Ten Commandments in 1956, it was an even bigger hit than the silent version. He could act, too: in Billy Wilder’s classic film Sunset Boulevard, DeMille memorably played himself. In the 1930s and 1940s DeMille became a household name thanks to the Lux Radio Theater, which he hosted. But after falling out with a union, he gave up the program, and his politics shifted to the right as he championed loyalty oaths and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunts.

As Scott Eyman brilliantly demonstrates in this superbly researched biography, which draws on a massive cache of DeMille family papers not available to previous biographers, DeMille was much more than his clichéd image. A gifted director who worked in many genres; a devoted family man and loyal friend with a highly unconventional personal life; a pioneering filmmaker: DeMille comes alive in these pages, a legend whose spectacular career defined an era.

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On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History

On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History Review

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On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History Feature

How do Holocaust survivors find words and voice for their memories of terror and loss? This landmark book presents striking new insights into the process of recounting the Holocaust. While other studies have been based, typically, on single interviews with survivors, this work summarizes twenty years of the author's interviews and reinterviews with the same core group. In this book, therefore, survivors' recounting is approached--not as one-time "testimony"--but as an ongoing, deepening conversation. Listening to survivors so intensively, we hear much that we have not heard before. We learn, for example, how survivors perceive us, their listeners, and the impact of listeners on what survivors do, in fact, retell. We meet the survivors themselves as distinct individuals, each with his or her specific style and voice. As we directly follow their efforts to recount, we see how Holocaust memories challenge their words even now--burdening survivors' speech, distorting it, and sometimes fully consuming it. "It is not a story," insisted one survivor about his memories. "It has to be made a story." On Listening to Holocaust Survivors shows us both the ways survivors can "make stories" for the "not-story" they remember and--just as important--the ways they are not able to do so.

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Abduction With Malice

Abduction With Malice Review

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Abduction With Malice Feature

Thousands of people are reported missing each year. Ninety percent return within the month - others turn up months, even years later. But few disappear completely. Of those few who do disappear permanently, rumors abound that the missing boys and girls from nations both rich and poor end up in brothels, as forced labour, even forced to marry, but all never to be seen again. But what happens when a maverick is abducted? A girl trained to protect herself. A girl not prepared to conform. A girl hell-bent on escape at all costs. A girl looking for revenge. This is the story of such a girl - her life, her loves and, above all, her absolute determination not to accept what fate throws at her. Abduction with Malice will set your heart racing: you'll either love or hate her, you'll cry, be shocked as you follow her into a grey underworld few have seen, where there are no rules except one...losing is not an option...win at all costs.

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Secret Soldiers of the Second Army

Secret Soldiers of the Second Army Review

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Secret Soldiers of the Second Army Feature

The book starts out picturing a young man who foolishly wants to go to war where he in vision's himself receiving all these high class medals for heroism but never once taking into account what it is going to take physically and mentally to get those medals. He's constantly playing a head game within himself and those that surround him. He like so many other young men of past eras are trying to be something that they're not and that small initial lie grows into a tremendous reputation that he has to live with and soon regrets that he's known by such. Come walk with the author and his brothers of the sword through the dark, humid, unforgiving jungles of Vietnam and experience the death, destruction, and mental sacrificial anguish they had to endure. Come see why you fear being alone in the denseness of a jungle or a forest that you have never entered before. Feel the heat of the Asian jungle floor intermixed with the leaches, ants, mosquitoes, snakes and humans searching you out only to destroy you at any cost. You see our author starts out innocently enough but soon finds out that war is not only a physical hardship demanding its pounds of flesh, but also is a horrendous mental agonizing hazard from which there is only one means of escape and/or retreat. That means to an end is death. Yes the author and his brothers of the sword will take their heroic missions and sacrificial allegiances to the grave with them. But, the real tragedy of it all is no one really cares about them in the first place. For they were and still are the "Secret Soldiers of the Second Army" willing to go anywhere, any time, to do the impossible for the ungrateful.

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No Price Too High

No Price Too High Review

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No Price Too High Feature

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