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The Lesser Madonnas is a linked collection of short stories about working class and immigrant life in Denver, CO. These stories highlight the real conflicts people have with identity and just getting by in a society that was not built specifically for them. The strength of this collection is the characters, who are all fully developed. The stories showcase the author's ability to empathize and occupy the spaces of many different kinds of people without being insensitive. It avoids politicizing these conflicts and instead focuses on the human side of how to survive within a major American city amidst a struggling economy and the challenges of daily life. These stories demonstrate a real range of conflicts and lifestyles, and the author handles all of them equally with care.
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In 1970, Second Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Hobbes, fresh out of college and ROTC, finds himself sent to South Korea instead of the expected Vietnam. His arrival at Kimpo Air Base turns his destiny from a war zone to another face of warfare, the destructive interactions between soldiers and camp followers, aka men and women, that are a part of conquest and occupation throughout history and around the world. Utterly unprepared, he follows trails and carves his own, his soul and sense of humanity falling to levels of hell that even Dante would find daunting.
A beautiful young Korean working girl, known only as Miss Kim, becomes Hobbes's partner and his guide into deception and danger. Pushing through his 13-month tour, he becomes a part of the thoughtless, predatory subculture that binds him to the love of his life, but at an impossible price.
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The Monosexual tells the story of Vincent Cappellini, an obsessed ultra-monogamist who struggles when his relationship with the love of his life abruptly ends. Twice-burned-once in love and once by the sun-he faces a host of challenges to his self-appointed sense of identity. Sunburn, bad sushi, a Sinatra karaoke contest, and the road rage fury of a woman scorned are but a few of the trials Vincent will endure while facing the ultimate test to his monosexuality-a new woman in his life.
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