Author Description

<p>Back in print and collected into one volume, stories from Don Bajema's underground sensations, Boy in the Air and Reach.</p><p>Hallucinating between childhood and manhood, Eddie Burnett is both hero and anti-hero of this hard-hitting collection of linked stories. Son of dust-bowl migrants to California, he comes of age in the post-war suburbs, freefalling through the turbulence of the sixties and early seventies. The transformation from a boy's innocence to a man's hardened wariness is captured in lyrical, emotionally raw episodes, as Eddie navigates the minefields of American masculinity. In a series of disturbing, yet strangely uplifting odysseys from hope to despair, and back again, he learns — and then must unlearn in order to save himself — the codes of self-destruction and misogyny, and the inevitable inadequacy of the would-be "hero." These are stories written straight from the heart, a gut-wrenching look at the nature of violence and dysfunction, with a hymn to the tenacity of hope, belief and conviction.</p><p>"Don is a great writer. His work is worth reading." -- Henry Rollins</p><p>"Bajema's prose is surly and mesmerizing, snakes down your throat like a pickup's exhaust. Fans of Sam Shepard will dig these desperate and beautiful tales." -- Joshua Mohr, author of Damascus</p><p>"Don Bajema is one of my favorite writers. His stories are tough, honest and sometimes brutal yet they're also merciful, wise and transcendent. Reading Bajema's work is like hearing an ancient, mysterious folk song played by a great rock and roll band in a dark bar somewhere in the Mojave Desert on a hot night. Don Bajema's stories makes me want to go write songs and play guitar too loud." -- Dave Alvin, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter</p><p>"Don gives an articulate voice to the outsider. He captures the fragility of adolescence and the awkwardness; how the random collection of our childhood experiences shape us into the person we are reacting against, coming to terms with