Bøger af John Mort

These twelve stories reflect the combat infantry experience of the Vietnam War--in the gritty "Tanks," "Called of God," and "Incubation Period." There's also the woman's perspective of Arlene, a naive Red Cross volunteer or "Doughnut Dolly," in "A Man's World." Mort captures veterans' experiences in "Rest Stop," a woeful, divorced man's tale; "Hallelujah By and By," a dark, almost supernatural story set in the Arkansas Ozarks; and "Behind Enemy Lines," the story of a homeless, damaged man who at last finds his way home. All but two of these stories were previously published in such magazines as GQ and the MISSOURI REVIEW, or in the collection, TANKS. Mort served with the First Cavalry in 1969 and 1970, near Tay Ninh, as an RTO.

It's 1966, Christmas Day, the Missouri Ozarks. Johnny Bell, not quite 16, is found in a snowdrift along a farm-to-market road by a fundamentalist farm family named Ogletree. Johnny came from Brownsville, Texas to the Ozarks, walking much of the way, with his grandfather, George Bell. George, a dying man, had determined to return to the home place he abandoned during the severe drought of the early 1950s because of a fabulous heritage he hopes to pass on to Johnny. Shortly after their arrival, George dies. Johnny is taken in by the Ogletree family, over the objections of Charley Larkin, a preacher, businessman, and Republican candidate for sheriff who was great friends with Johnny's father, an itinerant evangelist killed in the Korean War. Johnny, caring for the Ogletrees' chickens and goats, becomes great friends with the Ogletrees' oldest daughter, Suzanne. Another friend is a goat he finds in the woods, and names "La," after the queen in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. But Johnny can't get along with Everett, head of the Ogletree clan, and retreats to his own place, where he lives in an old machine shed. There he fixes his father's 1938 Ford coupe and schemes how to make a living, at last hiring out as a "hillbilly" in a brand-new theme park. An English teacher named Ruth Koontz casts him in a melodrama called GOAT BOY OF THE OZARKS, and Charley Larkin encourages Johnny to become an evangelist. But Johnny must find his own path, and he has a legacy to claim.

A murder impels the victim's son, a naive Mennonite farm boy, his sister, and an Osage farmhand to stake their fortunes on the last land run into Oklahoma Territory. While their aims are nonviolent, the murderer has other ideas.

John Mort's fourth short-story collection and winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. With settings in Florida, California, Mexico, Chicago, the Texas Panhandle, and, of course, the Ozarks themselves, these thirteen stories portray the unsung, amusing, brutal, forever hopeful lives of ordinary people.

Assist readers in their book selections with this guide, which covers titles spanning the entire spectrum of the Western genre-from such classics as those written by Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, and Max Brand to traditional novels by Elmer Kelton and contemporary novels of the West by Annie Proulx, Louise Erdrich, and Larry McMurtry.