Gregory Orfalea
Cloth $24.95
| 978-0-8156-0977-3
| 2010
Reviews
"Vibrant with passion, sober with wisdom, an irresistible
combination. Here’s a writer at the height of his powers,
here are stories that rise to that height. The Man Who
Guarded the Bomb has taught me a few things about
how good stories are made; it has also taught me what it
means to be human."
—Pablo Medina, author of The Cigar Roller
Description
A boy finds himself alone with his first love in a toboggan stalled atop
the Matterhorn at Disneyland. A woman, bitter about her marriage to a
man turned blind, must decide if he lives or dies. A man haunted by his
role in creating the H-bomb suddenly disappears in old age, only to turn
up at Alamagordo, seeking an Indian and redemption. Such characters,
at the crossroads of emotion and ethics, confounding loss and resurrection,
populate this unforgettable collection of tales. Loosely connected,
the stories chronicle the lives of the Matters, a captivating, tragic, yet
ultimately exultant Arab American family.
Spanning continents and a century, the stories center on the balm
that human relationships offer. In "The Chandelier," a boy desperate to
feed his starving family hauls a stolen chandelier over a snowy mountain
in Lebanon during World War I. A young Mexican nurse and her
lover wind their way through eighteenth-century California missions in
"Fabiola." Against the backdrop of the September 11 attacks, an Arab
American man is thrown from a bus, echoing past racial discriminations,
in "Get Off the Bus."
With a poet’s ear and a historian’s keen eye for detail, Orfalea offers
readers beautifully crafted stories filled with flawed yet irresistible characters
who are rendered with great tenderness and aching complexity.
View other books in the Arab American Writing series
Author
Gregory Orfalea was born and raised in Los Angeles. He directed the
writing program at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges, and he
currently teaches Arab American literature at Georgetown University.
The author of two acclaimed histories, The Arab Americans: A History
and Messengers of the Lost Battalion, in 2009 he published a collection
of memoirs and personal essays, Angeleno Days. He divides his time
between Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
6 x 9, 200 pages
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