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Robert Greer,
Isolation and Other Stories
A
PenMark Press Book
The twelve short
stories in this collection are a marked departure for Robert Greer,
who until their publication was known as a best-selling author of a
series of mystery novels featuring a black bail bondsman in Denver.
These stories reflect a more personal side of the author, drawing on
his experiences and interests. They are set in big cities, small
towns, mountains and plains. The characters range from homeless
people to ticket scalpers, from cowboys to youthful voyeurs, from
mentors and teachers to searchers and loners, of all ages and all
colors, looking for identity and seeking direction. A number of
original drawings add richness to the book. The book is available in
both soft cover, and as a hardcover edition limited to a printing of
1500 numbered copies. Click on the hat to read a short story from
this collection.
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader™)
Contents
Foreword
The Ride
Backup
Spoon
Prime
The Can Men
One-on-one
Isolation
Grief
Red-Nickel Rhythms
Choosing Sides
The Real Thing
Revision
End notes
Reviewers' comments:
“What we know about the world is that
it’s often unreasonable and certainly flawed... What we’re lucky
enough to have in such a world is a writer like Robert Greer whose
fiction, head-on and headlong, straight-forwardly and particularly,
portrays the complexity of our lives. The stories...are firmly
grounded—by voice, by situation, by character...Greer’s fiction does
not flinch; it values depiction. Greer is a realist; his
stories carry within them the rhythms of life as it is
lived...Always Greer’s fiction feels authentic. You trust it.”
Darrell Spencer, author of
Caution, Men in Trees
“Robert Greer...expands his horizon.
Greer’s novels are brilliant in terms of plot and character
rendering, rich in detail, and written with energy in a prose that
is lively and crisp. The beauty of it all is that his [short]
stories carry all these same qualities.”
Clarence Major, author of
All-Night Visitors
“A collection of beautifully written
stories, each one more lyrical and haunting than the last. Robert
Greer is truly a magician who turns mere words into characters and
landscapes and cityscapes that will live in your mind long after
you’ve reached the last page.”
Margaret Coel, author of The
Spirit Woman
“The characters in Robert Greer’s
fine…collection are chipped from stone, or well-up from the earth,
or, like the narrators’ rich voices, blow unhindered across
America’s empty landscapes.”
G.W. Hawkes, author of A
Gambler’s Rose
“A short story has been compared with
a flare in the sky that for a brief moment lights up one portion of
the world and the lives of a few people caught in its glare. The
stories in Robert Greer’s Isolation and Other Stories [do]
just that. Twelve stories in all, they are set in big cities, little
towns, an isolated ranch. The characters are sometimes white,
sometimes black. With only one exception, the recurring theme is the
power of friendship, love, forgiveness and humor.”
Sybil Downing in The Denver
Post
“Greer demonstrates a keen ear for the
way people talk, and a gift for capturing slices of indigenous life
in small-town America...[H]e succeeds in making us forget we’re
reading a book...[T]he stories in this book achieve the goal of
taking us into their times and places.”
Michael Salkind in the
Colorado Springs Independent
“[I]n settings from Texas to Chicago,
from L.A. to an Irish bar in South Boston, individuals separated
from the mainstream by race, poverty, or youth seek their way into
it, revenge on it, or both. Most of the stories end with the same
optimism — the best way to deal with a dismal present.”
Bostonia
Author
Robert
Greer is a practicing surgical pathologist, research scientist and
Professor of Pathology, Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry at the
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the University of
Colorado School of Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Greer is a
best-selling novelist, a book reviewer for National Public Radio on
KUVO in Denver Colorado, and raises Black Baldy cattle on his ranch
near Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
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