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Synopsis

Dive into craziness with a two-time Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist. Gary published books of poetry and multiple genres of fiction, and thought a mashup of voices and styles would be interesting at this stage. So here you have it. Mixed-genre stories chipped with poetry, and flash nonfiction in a montage of voices and styles. Realism and anti-realism, seekers and bums, epiphanies great and small, bound together by comic, poignant, and thoughtful threads that weave and unweave a multicolored tapestry. The book includes two novellas, one (short-listed for the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize) a quirky Southern quest narrative, and the other (selected for the Chicago Area Innovative Book Club) a last-minute confession that unravels the three relationships that ended up defining one man’s life. Get ready for edgy and quirky.

What Readers Are Saying

“A well-travelled road through multiple themes and meanings. Fun, poignant and reflective, but above everything, never dull.”
– Lee Hall, author of Darke Apocalypse and The Teleporter

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MAGGIE’S HOLLOW (Shortlisted for the William Faulkner – Wisdom Prize)

“Gautier gives us characters we know in unique situations and keeps us smiling throughout.”
– Michael T. Tusa, Jr., author of A Second Chance at Dancing and Chasing Charles Bukowski

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A DREAM OF LOVE WITH RAGGED CLAWS (Shortlisted for the William Faulkner – Wisdom Prize)

“A stop at the confessional becomes a life story . . . touching, funny, and remarkably real.”
– John Allen Stevenson, author of The Real History of Tom Jones and History of the British Novel: Defoe to Austen

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“A brilliantly woven narrative spanning five decades and three enduring yet elusive relationships”
– Robert Okaji, author of From Every Moment a Second and I Have a Bird to Whistle

Sample from “Love’s Ragged Claws”

There was at first no sound from the other side of the confessional. An absurd idea flashed through Father Angelo’s mind that the man on the other side had died. But Gabriel had merely paused again, thinking his own thoughts . . . 

* * *

Eva gazed out from her cabin window in Colorado. She could see a few rooftops of the town, and in the distance, the forest, thick with blue spruce and bristlecone pines, rising vertically up to the snow-capped peaks.

Rat-a-tap-tap-tap.

Funny how she knew Gabriel’s knock, how deeply embedded it was in the rings of her memory. She opened the door, and there he was, smiling, a little older than the last time she had seen him, but still willowy tall with arms thrown about, a patch of thick white hair on his head. Still smiling the same smile.

“Hallo, love,” he said, tossing off his knit hat. Still a spring in his step, she thought.

“How are you feeling, Eva?”

“Good,” she said, and she let him hug her.

“More or less,” she added.

That’s my old Eva, Gabriel thought. In that one phrase, he recognized layers of her psyche at work. She had been a dental lab technician, crafting the tiniest contours of the human tooth. Good at it, too, but crippled by perfectionism. She could never finish anything for fear it would not be good enough. Never be too hopeful. To be hopeful is to be crushed when perfection is missed. She felt good in his presence; he knew that. And through the lens of that goodness he could see all the folds her beauty. Her features themselves, well, all her life she had been known for plainness of features. And look at her now. Still the round boyish face, the pixie haircut, but with more gray. Yet she knew how deeply Gabriel saw in her plainness a pristine beauty. And she loved it. But no, it raised expectations to an insufferable level. She must moderate expectations to avoid the crushing moment of their falling short.

“More or less,” she repeated, and they held each other’s gaze for one second more, a second in which each recognized the other’s penetration, saw their hidden graces and flaws exposed, the little psychological mechanisms that they could not control and that seemed so serious at other times, reduced to mere curiosities when they were together.

“Should we go into Boulder?” asked Gabriel.

“Yes, let’s,” said Eva, and down they went through the winding canyons.

Sample from “Restoration Comedy”

When they sent Preston to college, they were not expecting this. That was four years ago. Whatever they expected, it was not this.

“You were the genius, the celebutante, the one who knew everything.” The woman spoke deliberately, calmly, bitingly. She tossed her fluffy, highlighted hair, but kept her chin high.

She mimicked the voice of her husband. “’Let the boy know a bit of the world,’ says he.” She looked icily at the object of the pronoun. “And off he went” – she turned to add ice cubes to her mint julep – “to the den of iniquity.”

She dropped herself languidly into an armchair. From the window she could see the banana trees on the side of their posh Victorian house, the moss-laden oaks on St. Charles Avenue, and a distant streetcar stopping on its track that ran along a neutral ground more pastoral than urban.

“Rigor Mortis University is a respectable liberal arts college, not a den of iniquity, Poppy.” The gentleman spoke matter-of-factly, not looking up from his paper and pipe.

“Isn’t that true, Maria?” he added to the housekeeper, a middle-aged woman working a feather duster around the room.

“One den’s as good as another,” said Maria. Maria did not do a whole lot of housekeeping, but Warren kept her around because he liked her grit, her street smarts and related commentaries, which Warren thought entertaining, as it disrupted Poppy’s rarified sense of decorum.

Poppy continued to look out of the window. She thought of her debutante ball, of the summer of 1969, when she graduated high school and went on the grand tour of Europe. What had happened?

“Warren,” she said. “Remember that little beach in Séte, France?”

Warren kept reading his paper. He knew the routine.

“Oh, yes,” Poppy said acidly. “That’s right. You’ve never been to Europe. Too busy running the hardware stores.”

“It’s kept you in pearls,” said Warren laconically.

It was true. His family had a chain of hardware stores. Warren had managed the lot for the past twenty-five years. Ever since Poppy had known him, really.

“Someone’s got to work,” he added. “To keep the idle aristocracy in pearls. Right, Maria?”

“Now, Mr. Warren, Don’t push on Miss Poppy like that. She’s born and bred better’n you.”

Poppy always felt that maybe Warren and Maria were in league against her, but Maria had tended her before she met Warren. Maria came from her family. Anyway, she could never put her finger on a direct insult. And Maria was good in other ways. It was Maria that brought in her nephew, the handyman, Lopez. Her Cuban nephew, she had said. “Ethnic,” was Poppy’s first impression, but Lopez worked miracles with that tool belt. And in other ways, too.

A few miles away, the venerable son, Preston, was licking his comb and slicking the blonde hair back on his large pale rectangular head.

“You’ll love it,” he said.

“Sure,” said Mario.

Preston was returning home to New Orleans after his 4th year of college. His parents, Warren and Poppy, were probably expecting a graduation notice, but it was not to be. Though quite diligent at the social development afforded by the college experience, Preston was somewhat derelict on the academic side. But no worries. In lieu of that lofty notification, he brought home a college friend, Mario, a true Louisiana boy from New Iberia, who, if Preston had his way, would assist in a prank of the highest, not to say the most malicious, order.

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Author Bio:

With an MA from UT-Austin and a PhD from CU-Boulder, Gary has taught university writing and literature courses and given numerous radio interviews. He has two Amazon #1 bestsellers, was twice shortlisted for the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize, was featured in Chicago’s Innovative Fiction Book Club, and a screenplay adaptation of his novel, Mr. Robert’s Bones, made second round at the Austin Film Festival. Gary was born in New Orleans, has hitchhiked through 35 states and 19 countries, run two marathons, and once, due to a series of misadventures, spent six months as the chef at a French restaurant. He currently lives in the pueblos mágicos of central Mexico.