Hailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness." It tells the story of Al, a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to life weights and pick up girls, and his strange friend Birdy, the skinny, tongue-tied perhaps genius who only wants to raise canaries and to fly. While fighting in World War II, they find their dreams become all too real--and their lives are changed forever....
Hailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about...
John Tremont, a middle-aged man with a family, is summoned to his mother's bedside after she has suffered a heart attack. When he arrives, he finds her shaken but surviving; it is his father, left alone, who is unable to cope, who begins to fail, to slip away from life. Joined by his nineteen-year-old son, John suddenly becomes enmeshed in the frightening, consuming, endless minutiae of caring for a beloved, dying parent. He also finds himself inescapably confronting his own middle age, jammed between his son's feckless impatience to get on with his life and his father's heartbreaking...
John Tremont, a middle-aged man with a family, is summoned to his mother's bedside after she has suffered a heart attack. When he arrives, he finds...
Set in the Ardennes Forest on Christmas Eve 1944, Sergeant Will Knott and five other GIs are ordered close to the German lines to establish an observation post in an abandoned chateau. Here they play at being soldiers in what seems to be complete isolation. That is, until the Germans begin revealing their whereabouts and leaving signs of their presence: a scarecrow, equipment the squad had dropped on a retreat from a reconnaissance mission and, strangest of all, a small fir tree hung with fruit, candles, and cardboard stars. Suddenly, Knott and the others must unravel these mysteries,...
Set in the Ardennes Forest on Christmas Eve 1944, Sergeant Will Knott and five other GIs are ordered close to the German lines to establish an obse...
"I've become convinced the physical life we must live out is but ephemeral. It gives me much comfort and has allowed for new experiences of a spiritual nature I've never had before." --William Wharton, from the Epilogue
In August of 1988, heavy black smoke engulfed an Oregon highway, causing a massive 23-car pileup that claimed the lives of novelist William Wharton's 36-year-old daughter, her husband, and their two infant daughters. They'd been victims of field burning, a routine agricultural practice, and were burned alive in their van.
How could such a thing happen?...
"I've become convinced the physical life we must live out is but ephemeral. It gives me much comfort and has allowed for new experiences of a spiri...
