“A boy who loses everything but his heart."The day All-American Joey Blade turns 18, he learns his ex-girlfriend is pregnant, is betrayed by his new girlfriend, and is arrested for the attempted murder of two police officers. Then things get bad.The high school bonfire is supposed to be the kickoff to a great night: Joey has just won a football scholarship and he's hoping for a sex breakthrough with his new girlfriend. Then his true love--but ex-girlfriend-...

Everyone dies famous is a story from the heartland about the uncommon lives of everyday people — the choices they make, how they live their lives, and how they die.1st Prize - Top Shelf Book Awards - Souithern FictionAs a tornado threatens their town, a stubborn old man who has lost his son teams up with a troubled young soldier to deliver a jukebox to the wealthy developer having an affair with the soldier’s wife. It’s July 2003 and the sm...

September 1953...Dancer Stonemason is three days from his major league debut. With his wife and son cheering him on, he pitches the greatest game of his life. And then loses everything.Told against the backdrop of America's postwar challenges from Little Rock to the Bay of Pigs to Viet Nam, American Past Time is the story of what happens to a man and his family after the cheering stops.

Someone asked me what the theme of my collection was. I hate those questions. I'm really bad at theme. I don't think about a theme when I'm writing the story. I'm just trying to tell a story that interests me (and hopefully someone else).Here's a tagline for some of the stories:Riding a Greyhound Bus into the New World - a widower searches for the innocent boy he used to beDalton's Good Fortune - a down-on-his-luck ex-soldie...

When his boyhood friend vanishes, a man who has coasted through life on the fading memory of high school heroics, risks everything to save him.They had a parade for Darwin Burr years ago when his team won the state title. He's coasted through life on that memory. Still lives in Claxton, Illinois - but the bucolic farm town now simmers with racial tension. He has a cushy job working for his wheeler-dealer boyhood friend, Billy Rourke. He has a country house, a healthy 401k, and stil...

Clayton Stonemason idolized his father, a hometown hero in their small Missouri town. But when his father's life unravels, Clayton loses his way, too. He tries to escape his father's legacy but discovers he can't run away from his destiny.AMERICAN JUKEBOX, a story of small-town America in the last decades of the twentieth century, explores the many ways our relationships, hopes and dreams can alter the course of our lives.

Jake Doyle used to be famous.Twenty years ago, his Chicago political column was syndicated in two hundred papers, but he had an affair - and a son - with his intern, and lost it all. Now he writes a local column and drivers for Uber to pay his bills.Jake is playing out the string when his tranquil world is turned upside down. His biracial son - an ambitious entrepreneur - is marked for death by a street gangster, his alcoholic daughter is pregnant and wants an abortion - wh...