Author: Sean Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781646625390
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Acclaimed author and music critic Sean Murphy's new poetry collection is a searing and timely take on American culture that finds perspective on the present by interrogating our past. The Blackened Blues offers a powerful glimpse into the human psyche, exploring the minds of artists and visionaries, addicts and trauma survivors, searching (as we all are) for "some way to live." We leave this book with a heavy dose of truth, but also of the kind of beauty that makes such truth bearable.
The Blackened Blues
Author: Sean Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781646625390
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Acclaimed author and music critic Sean Murphy's new poetry collection is a searing and timely take on American culture that finds perspective on the present by interrogating our past. The Blackened Blues offers a powerful glimpse into the human psyche, exploring the minds of artists and visionaries, addicts and trauma survivors, searching (as we all are) for "some way to live." We leave this book with a heavy dose of truth, but also of the kind of beauty that makes such truth bearable.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781646625390
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Acclaimed author and music critic Sean Murphy's new poetry collection is a searing and timely take on American culture that finds perspective on the present by interrogating our past. The Blackened Blues offers a powerful glimpse into the human psyche, exploring the minds of artists and visionaries, addicts and trauma survivors, searching (as we all are) for "some way to live." We leave this book with a heavy dose of truth, but also of the kind of beauty that makes such truth bearable.
Clifford's Blues
Author: John A. Williams
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504033051
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
A black musician arrested by Nazis in 1930s Germany endures the horrors of the Dachau death camp in this harrowing novel based on historical fact A self-proclaimed “gay negro” from New Orleans, Clifford Pepperidge made his name in the smoky nightclubs of Harlem in the 1920s, playing piano alongside Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. A decade later, he thrills crowds nightly in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. But dark days are on the horizon as the Nazi Party rises to power. Arrested by Hitler’s Gestapo during a roundup of homosexuals, Clifford finds himself placed in “protective custody” and transported to a concentration camp. Stripped of his dignity and his identity, and plunged into a nightmare of forced labor, starvation, and abuse, he seeks escape in his music. When a camp SS officer and jazz aficionado recognizes Clifford, the gentle musician learns just how far a desperate man will go in order to survive. Shining a light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust, Clifford’s Blues is a disturbing portrait of a dark era in world history and a poignant celebration of the resilience of the human spirit and the power of music.
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504033051
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
A black musician arrested by Nazis in 1930s Germany endures the horrors of the Dachau death camp in this harrowing novel based on historical fact A self-proclaimed “gay negro” from New Orleans, Clifford Pepperidge made his name in the smoky nightclubs of Harlem in the 1920s, playing piano alongside Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. A decade later, he thrills crowds nightly in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. But dark days are on the horizon as the Nazi Party rises to power. Arrested by Hitler’s Gestapo during a roundup of homosexuals, Clifford finds himself placed in “protective custody” and transported to a concentration camp. Stripped of his dignity and his identity, and plunged into a nightmare of forced labor, starvation, and abuse, he seeks escape in his music. When a camp SS officer and jazz aficionado recognizes Clifford, the gentle musician learns just how far a desperate man will go in order to survive. Shining a light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust, Clifford’s Blues is a disturbing portrait of a dark era in world history and a poignant celebration of the resilience of the human spirit and the power of music.
Fresh from Louisiana
Author: George Graham
Publisher: Harvard Common Press
ISBN: 159233976X
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
Master the art of all the most delectable styles of Louisiana cooking, from Cajun to Creole, rural Acadiana to down-home New Orleans, in more than 100 easy-to-use recipes. George Graham—a lifelong Louisianan, a former chef and restaurateur, and now an award-winning food writer and blogger—is a brilliant cook, a warm, funny, and engaging storyteller, and an ace photographer. He brings all these talents alive in Fresh from Louisiana, his second cookbook, following on the heels of his masterful Acadiana Table. George makes Louisiana cooking not just easy for home cooks to learn, but fun and interesting, too. The recipes range from George's pitch-perfect versions of classic Louisiana dishes to imaginative, brand-new ideas that use the signature flavors of the region's cuisines in utterly new ways. You can start a glorious Louisiana meal with a Corn and Crab Bisque, a Crawfish Boil Chowder, or Mini Bell Peppers Stuffed with Crabmeat. For a main course, why not try a Pork Roast with Apple Pan Gravy, Crisp Chicken Thighs with Creole Jasmine Rice, or a Gulf Shrimp Pasta Primavera? There are lots of desserts, too, like Praline Pumpkin Pie, Macadamia Nut Ice Cream Sandwich, and Sweet Potato Pie Brûlée, plus sides, sandwiches, cooling drinks, and breakfast and brunch fare. For soul-satisfying everyday dinners with family to amazing weekend feasts with friends, this beautiful book—with more than 100 color photos—brings the intriguing and delicious flavors of Louisiana home, wherever you might live.
Publisher: Harvard Common Press
ISBN: 159233976X
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
Master the art of all the most delectable styles of Louisiana cooking, from Cajun to Creole, rural Acadiana to down-home New Orleans, in more than 100 easy-to-use recipes. George Graham—a lifelong Louisianan, a former chef and restaurateur, and now an award-winning food writer and blogger—is a brilliant cook, a warm, funny, and engaging storyteller, and an ace photographer. He brings all these talents alive in Fresh from Louisiana, his second cookbook, following on the heels of his masterful Acadiana Table. George makes Louisiana cooking not just easy for home cooks to learn, but fun and interesting, too. The recipes range from George's pitch-perfect versions of classic Louisiana dishes to imaginative, brand-new ideas that use the signature flavors of the region's cuisines in utterly new ways. You can start a glorious Louisiana meal with a Corn and Crab Bisque, a Crawfish Boil Chowder, or Mini Bell Peppers Stuffed with Crabmeat. For a main course, why not try a Pork Roast with Apple Pan Gravy, Crisp Chicken Thighs with Creole Jasmine Rice, or a Gulf Shrimp Pasta Primavera? There are lots of desserts, too, like Praline Pumpkin Pie, Macadamia Nut Ice Cream Sandwich, and Sweet Potato Pie Brûlée, plus sides, sandwiches, cooling drinks, and breakfast and brunch fare. For soul-satisfying everyday dinners with family to amazing weekend feasts with friends, this beautiful book—with more than 100 color photos—brings the intriguing and delicious flavors of Louisiana home, wherever you might live.
Journeyman's Road
Author: Adam Gussow
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572335691
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Journeyman's Road offers a bold new vision of where the blues have been in the course of the twentieth century and what they have become at the dawn of the new millennium: a world music rippling with postmodern contradictions. Author Adam Gussow brings a unique perspective to this exploration. Not just an award-winning scholar and memoirist, he is an accomplished blues harmonica player, a Handy award nominee, and veteran of the international club and festival circuit. With this unusual depth of experience, Gussow skillfully places blues literature in dialogue with the music that provokes it, vibrantly articulating a vital American tradition. At the heart of Gussow's story is his own unlikely yet remarkable streetside partnership with Harlem bluesman Sterling Mr. Satan Magee, a musical collaboration marked not just by a series of polarities--black and white, Mississippi and Princeton, hard-won mastery and youthful apprenticeship--but by creative energies that pushed beyond apparent differences to forge new dialogues and new sounds. Undercutting familiar myths about the down-home sources of blues authenticity, Gussow celebrates New York's mongrel blues scene: the artists, the jam sessions, the venues, the street performers, and the eccentrics. At once elegiac and forward-looking, Journeyman's Road offers a collective portrait of the New York subculture struggling with the legacy of 9/11 and healing itself with the blues.
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572335691
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Journeyman's Road offers a bold new vision of where the blues have been in the course of the twentieth century and what they have become at the dawn of the new millennium: a world music rippling with postmodern contradictions. Author Adam Gussow brings a unique perspective to this exploration. Not just an award-winning scholar and memoirist, he is an accomplished blues harmonica player, a Handy award nominee, and veteran of the international club and festival circuit. With this unusual depth of experience, Gussow skillfully places blues literature in dialogue with the music that provokes it, vibrantly articulating a vital American tradition. At the heart of Gussow's story is his own unlikely yet remarkable streetside partnership with Harlem bluesman Sterling Mr. Satan Magee, a musical collaboration marked not just by a series of polarities--black and white, Mississippi and Princeton, hard-won mastery and youthful apprenticeship--but by creative energies that pushed beyond apparent differences to forge new dialogues and new sounds. Undercutting familiar myths about the down-home sources of blues authenticity, Gussow celebrates New York's mongrel blues scene: the artists, the jam sessions, the venues, the street performers, and the eccentrics. At once elegiac and forward-looking, Journeyman's Road offers a collective portrait of the New York subculture struggling with the legacy of 9/11 and healing itself with the blues.
Mindscapes
Author: Martin Carrier
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822970465
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Leading scholars in the fields of philosophy and the sciences of the mind have contributed to this newest volume in the prestigious Pittsburgh-Konstanz series. Among the problem areas discussed are folk psychology, meanings as conceptual structures, functional and qualitative properties of colors, the role of conscious mental states, representation and mental content, the impact of connectionism on the philosophy of the mind, and supervenience, emergence, and realization. Most of the essays are followed by commentaries that reflect ongoing debates in the philosophy of the mind and often develop a counterpoint to the claims of the essayists.
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822970465
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Leading scholars in the fields of philosophy and the sciences of the mind have contributed to this newest volume in the prestigious Pittsburgh-Konstanz series. Among the problem areas discussed are folk psychology, meanings as conceptual structures, functional and qualitative properties of colors, the role of conscious mental states, representation and mental content, the impact of connectionism on the philosophy of the mind, and supervenience, emergence, and realization. Most of the essays are followed by commentaries that reflect ongoing debates in the philosophy of the mind and often develop a counterpoint to the claims of the essayists.
Franchising Dreams
Author: Peter M. Birkeland
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226051918
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 564
Book Description
Franchises have become an ever-present feature of American life, both in our landscapes and our economics. Peter M. Birkeland worked for three years in the front-line operations of franchise units for three companies, met with CEOs and executives, and attended countless trade shows, seminars, and expositions. Through this extensive fieldwork Birkeland not only discovered what makes franchisees succeed or fail, he uncovered the difficulties in running a business according to someone else's system and values. Bearing witness to a market flooded with fierce competitors and dependent on the inscrutable whims of consumers, he revealed the numerous challenges that franchisees face in making their businesses succeed. Book jacket.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226051918
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 564
Book Description
Franchises have become an ever-present feature of American life, both in our landscapes and our economics. Peter M. Birkeland worked for three years in the front-line operations of franchise units for three companies, met with CEOs and executives, and attended countless trade shows, seminars, and expositions. Through this extensive fieldwork Birkeland not only discovered what makes franchisees succeed or fail, he uncovered the difficulties in running a business according to someone else's system and values. Bearing witness to a market flooded with fierce competitors and dependent on the inscrutable whims of consumers, he revealed the numerous challenges that franchisees face in making their businesses succeed. Book jacket.
Toward a Science of Consciousness III
Author: Stuart R. Hameroff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262581813
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 532
Book Description
Can there be a science of consciousness? This issue has been the focus of three landmark conferences sponsored by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The first two conferences and books have become touchstones for the field. This volume presents a selection of invited papers from the third conference. Can there be a science of consciousness? This issue has been the focus of three landmark conferences sponsored by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The first two conferences and books have become touchstones for the field. This volume presents a selection of invited papers from the third conference. It showcases recent progress in this maturing field by researchers from philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, phenomenology, and physics. It is divided into nine sections: the explanatory gap, color, neural correlates of consciousness, vision, emotion, the evolution and function of consciousness, physical reality, the timing of conscious experience, and phenomenology. Each section is preceded by an overview and commentary by the editors. Contributors Dick J. Bierman, Jeffrey Burgdorf, A. Graham Cairns-Smith, William H. Calvin, Christian de Quincey, Frank H. Durgin, Vittorio Gallese, Elizabeth L. Glisky, Melvyn A. Goodale, Richard L. Gregory, Scott Hagan, C. Larry Hardin, C. A. Heywood, Masayuki Hirafuji, Nicholas Humphrey, Harry T. Hunt, Piet Hut, Alfred W. Kaszniak, Robert W. Kentridge, Stanley A. Klein, Charles D. Laughlin, Joseph Levine, Lianggang Lou, Shimon Malin, A. David Milner, Steven Mithen, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Stephen Palmer, Jaak Panksepp, Dean Radin, Steven Z. Rapcsak, Sheryl L. Reminger, Antti Revonsuo, Gregg H. Rosenberg, Yves Rossetti, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Jonathan Shear, Galen Strawson, Robert Van Gulick, Frances Vaughan, Franz X. Vollenweider, B. Alan Wallace, Douglas F. Watt, Larry Weiskrantz, Fred A. Wolf, Kunio Yasue, Arthur Zajonc
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262581813
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 532
Book Description
Can there be a science of consciousness? This issue has been the focus of three landmark conferences sponsored by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The first two conferences and books have become touchstones for the field. This volume presents a selection of invited papers from the third conference. Can there be a science of consciousness? This issue has been the focus of three landmark conferences sponsored by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The first two conferences and books have become touchstones for the field. This volume presents a selection of invited papers from the third conference. It showcases recent progress in this maturing field by researchers from philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, phenomenology, and physics. It is divided into nine sections: the explanatory gap, color, neural correlates of consciousness, vision, emotion, the evolution and function of consciousness, physical reality, the timing of conscious experience, and phenomenology. Each section is preceded by an overview and commentary by the editors. Contributors Dick J. Bierman, Jeffrey Burgdorf, A. Graham Cairns-Smith, William H. Calvin, Christian de Quincey, Frank H. Durgin, Vittorio Gallese, Elizabeth L. Glisky, Melvyn A. Goodale, Richard L. Gregory, Scott Hagan, C. Larry Hardin, C. A. Heywood, Masayuki Hirafuji, Nicholas Humphrey, Harry T. Hunt, Piet Hut, Alfred W. Kaszniak, Robert W. Kentridge, Stanley A. Klein, Charles D. Laughlin, Joseph Levine, Lianggang Lou, Shimon Malin, A. David Milner, Steven Mithen, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Stephen Palmer, Jaak Panksepp, Dean Radin, Steven Z. Rapcsak, Sheryl L. Reminger, Antti Revonsuo, Gregg H. Rosenberg, Yves Rossetti, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Jonathan Shear, Galen Strawson, Robert Van Gulick, Frances Vaughan, Franz X. Vollenweider, B. Alan Wallace, Douglas F. Watt, Larry Weiskrantz, Fred A. Wolf, Kunio Yasue, Arthur Zajonc
The Coupling Convention : Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction
Author: Ann duCille Associate Professor of English and African American Studies Wesleyan University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195359119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
What does the tradition of marriage mean for people who have historically been deprived of its legal status? Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts such as Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Anglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot--what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. She demonstrates the ways in which black women appropriated this novelistic device as a means of expressing and reclaiming their own identity. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other. Much more than a period study, The Coupling Convention spans the period from 1853 to 1948, addressing the vital questions of gender, subjectivity, race, and the canon that inform literary study today. In this original work, duCille offers a new paradigm for reading black women's fiction.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195359119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
What does the tradition of marriage mean for people who have historically been deprived of its legal status? Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts such as Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Anglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot--what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. She demonstrates the ways in which black women appropriated this novelistic device as a means of expressing and reclaiming their own identity. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other. Much more than a period study, The Coupling Convention spans the period from 1853 to 1948, addressing the vital questions of gender, subjectivity, race, and the canon that inform literary study today. In this original work, duCille offers a new paradigm for reading black women's fiction.
Experience and Possibility
Author: Joseph Mendola
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192642464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Book Description
Experience and Possibility concerns the modal ontology of experience. It investigates the detailed metaphysics of the colors, shapes, and other concrete properties present in our experience of ordinary concrete objects, and also of their spatial and temporal relations. It examines their experienced particularity, and the nature of their locations and material bits. This detailed concern with specific cases reveals many inadequacies of traditional ontology. But the central novelty of the book is an intense focus on the modal aspects of such experienced entities, and what it reveals about modality in general. The reality of such things would involve in surprising ways not merely what would hence be actual but also what would be merely possible. This supports a general conception of modality, of the possible and the necessary, according to which the actual and the possible are locally entwined and involve different types of being. The particulars, properties, and relations we experience involve distinctive forms of modal structure, characteristic of specific sorts of universals and irreducible particularities. When this experience is not veridical, when for instance the color we experience is somewhat misleading about reality, it is a puzzle how we have such experience nonetheless. Exploration of these forms of modal structure is groundwork for a new account of how our neurophysiology explains such misleading experience, how our physical structure delivers such qualia. This is sketched for the case of experienced color. Its core idea is that the apparent modal structure of things we experience is sometimes due to the actual modal structure of the neurophysiology that constitutes that experience.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192642464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Book Description
Experience and Possibility concerns the modal ontology of experience. It investigates the detailed metaphysics of the colors, shapes, and other concrete properties present in our experience of ordinary concrete objects, and also of their spatial and temporal relations. It examines their experienced particularity, and the nature of their locations and material bits. This detailed concern with specific cases reveals many inadequacies of traditional ontology. But the central novelty of the book is an intense focus on the modal aspects of such experienced entities, and what it reveals about modality in general. The reality of such things would involve in surprising ways not merely what would hence be actual but also what would be merely possible. This supports a general conception of modality, of the possible and the necessary, according to which the actual and the possible are locally entwined and involve different types of being. The particulars, properties, and relations we experience involve distinctive forms of modal structure, characteristic of specific sorts of universals and irreducible particularities. When this experience is not veridical, when for instance the color we experience is somewhat misleading about reality, it is a puzzle how we have such experience nonetheless. Exploration of these forms of modal structure is groundwork for a new account of how our neurophysiology explains such misleading experience, how our physical structure delivers such qualia. This is sketched for the case of experienced color. Its core idea is that the apparent modal structure of things we experience is sometimes due to the actual modal structure of the neurophysiology that constitutes that experience.
Prodigal Blues
Author: Gary A. Braunbeck
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
From award-winning author Gary A. Braunbeck comes Prodigal Blues, his first foray into non-supernatural horror. After he finds himself stranded at a truck stop in Missouri, Mark Sieber gets one of the biggest shocks of his life when he recognizes the face of a little girl on a Missing poster as belonging to the same little girl he saw only a few minutes before. Looking around for some sign of her, he comes back to his table in the restaurant to find the little sitting there, waiting for him. "I'm sorry, mister," is all she seems capable of saying. As the police and media begin to converge on the truck stop, Mark retreats back to his hotel room to call his wife and let her know what's going on, only to be taken hostage by the same people who released the little girl. But his abductors are little more than children themselves. Ranging in ages from 12 to 19, Mark's abductors are in the process of escaping from a sadistic pedophile known to them only as "Grendel" a man whose practices include torture and mutilation specifically, mutilation of the face. Mark's abductors have all been mutilated by Grendel who may be very close behind them and need someone with a "normal face" to help them carry out their plan for justice and returning home. For the next few days, Mark will come to understand not only the inhuman horror that these children have suffered, but how they eventually learned to fight back and how they discovered that Grendel and his practices are at the center of a very complex network catering to those who tastes run toward the molestation and mutilation of children. Prodigal Blues is perhaps Braunbeck's most suspenseful and emotionally powerful work to date; a story of suffering, depravity, redemption, and in the end the individual's compassion for his or her fellow human beings that can lead some people to finding reserves of courage and determination they never thought they possessed. Terrifying, suspenseful, sometimes surprisingly funny, and ultimately moving, Prodigal Blues is quintessential Braunbeck.
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
From award-winning author Gary A. Braunbeck comes Prodigal Blues, his first foray into non-supernatural horror. After he finds himself stranded at a truck stop in Missouri, Mark Sieber gets one of the biggest shocks of his life when he recognizes the face of a little girl on a Missing poster as belonging to the same little girl he saw only a few minutes before. Looking around for some sign of her, he comes back to his table in the restaurant to find the little sitting there, waiting for him. "I'm sorry, mister," is all she seems capable of saying. As the police and media begin to converge on the truck stop, Mark retreats back to his hotel room to call his wife and let her know what's going on, only to be taken hostage by the same people who released the little girl. But his abductors are little more than children themselves. Ranging in ages from 12 to 19, Mark's abductors are in the process of escaping from a sadistic pedophile known to them only as "Grendel" a man whose practices include torture and mutilation specifically, mutilation of the face. Mark's abductors have all been mutilated by Grendel who may be very close behind them and need someone with a "normal face" to help them carry out their plan for justice and returning home. For the next few days, Mark will come to understand not only the inhuman horror that these children have suffered, but how they eventually learned to fight back and how they discovered that Grendel and his practices are at the center of a very complex network catering to those who tastes run toward the molestation and mutilation of children. Prodigal Blues is perhaps Braunbeck's most suspenseful and emotionally powerful work to date; a story of suffering, depravity, redemption, and in the end the individual's compassion for his or her fellow human beings that can lead some people to finding reserves of courage and determination they never thought they possessed. Terrifying, suspenseful, sometimes surprisingly funny, and ultimately moving, Prodigal Blues is quintessential Braunbeck.