Brian Doyle

In Neawanaka, a small coastal Oregon town, Daniel Cooney, a 12-year-old who wears his hair in three different-colored braids, has a terrible bike accident in the woods and is rescued by a bear. Daniel's grandfather, Worried Man, is able to sense others' pain even from a distance and goes on a dangerous mountain mission to track down the source of time with his dear friend, Cedar. Other key stories involve a young police officer whose life is threatened,...

"On the last day of summer, a young college grad moved to Chicago and rented a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lived there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed....

"Novelist and essayist Brian Doyle describes encounters with astounding beings of every sort and shape in this collection of short vignettes. The book gathers previously unpublished work along with selections that have been published in Orion, The Sun, and The American Scholar" --

"A collection of headlong tales by Oregon author Brian Doyle - exploring such riveting and peculiar topics as chess in the Levant, tailors who specialize in holes, how to report stigmata to your attending physician, the intense hilarity of basketball, how to have a bitter verbal marital fight in your car, an all-Chinese football team in Australia, soccer and Catholicism, what it's like to be in a ska band, a singing Korean baker, an archbishop who...