Robert Olmstead is een veelgeprezen Amerikaanse romanschrijver en pedagoog. Zijn werk duikt vaak in de complexiteit van de menselijke ervaring en onderzoekt thema's die verband houden met natuur, familie en grenzen. Olmstead's proza wordt gekenmerkt door een sterk gevoel voor plaats en een vermogen om lezers onder te dompelen in de landschappen die hij beschrijft, of het nu de landelijke omgeving van een boerderij is of de rauwe schoonheid van een woestijn. Zijn schrijven wordt geprezen om zijn authenticiteit en lyrische kwaliteit, die de essentie van diepe emoties en relaties vastlegt.
When Robey Childs's mother experiences a premonition about her husband, a Civil War soldier, she sends her only son to retrieve his father from the battlefield, accompanied by a horse that becomes his only companion as he makes his way through the destruction of war.
Set against the backdrop of 1916 Mexico, an aging cavalryman named Napoleon Childs leads a group of inexperienced soldiers in pursuit of the elusive Pancho Villa. As they navigate harsh terrain, their mission takes a dire turn when they face a devastating ambush. After witnessing the loss of his troops, Napoleon finds himself captured and abandoned in the unforgiving desert, facing a fight for survival against overwhelming odds.
The year was 1873 and all about was the evidence of boom and bust, shattered dreams, foolish ambition, depredation, shame, greed, and cruelty . . .
Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly destroys him. To escape the wrath of the young girl’s father, Henry joins the Marines, arriving in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the defining moment of the Korean War. There he confronts an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining, but the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. From the steamy streets of New Orleans to the bone-chilling Korean landscape, award-winning author Robert Olmstead takes us into one of the most physically challenging battles in history and, with just as much intensity, into an electrifying, all-consuming love affair.
Novelist Robert Olmstead journeys back to his youth on his grandfather's New Hampshire dairy farm to confront the ghosts that continue to afflict him in this coming-of-age memoir. Robert Olmstead has peopled his fiction with the rough-hewn farmers, loggers, and hired hands of rural New England mountain towns where getting drunk, getting into fights, and getting thrown out of bars are the normal rites of passage. In Stay Here with Me, Olmstead lays bare the acute pain of his father's alcoholism and the decline of his grandfather, the family patriarch. With delicate sensuality, he also traces the flowering of his first love for a woman who "walks like light would walk if it could." Authentic, intimate, and intense, Stay Here with Me is about growing up and leaving home and about the acts of rebellion that free the body even as they bind the soul to a place forever. This Nonpareil edition includes a new introduction by novelist and essayist, Brock Clarke.
Zwei junge Menschen, Vetter und Kusine, teffen sich an einem entscheidenden Punkt ihres Lebens. Raymond hat soeben sein Studium abgebrochen, und Juliet gibt das Kind, das sie von einem ungeliebten Mann bekommen hat, zur Adoption frei. Zusammen brechen die beiden auf und mit einer Harley-Davidson erkunden sie den amerikanischen Westen, lassen sich gefangennehmen von der kargen Schönheit der Landschaft. Sie erleben die Liebe und genießen das Gefühl grenzenloser Freiheit.
Auf der Farm in New Hampshire scheint 1972 die Zeit still zu stehen. Seit Generationen hat sie niemand mehr verlassen, es sei denn zum Sterben. Der 18jährige Robert bricht mit dieser Tradition: sein Collegebesuch bedeutet mehr als ein blosser Ortswechsel.
Ein ebenso makabrer wie tragikomischer Roman aus dem Leben eines amerikanischen Bestattungsunternehmers.
