Synopses & Reviews
Moving from fable and historical fiction to contemporary realism, this book of stories from Barry Lopez is erotic and wise, full of irresistible characters doing things they shouldn't do for reasons that are mysterious and irreducible. In "The Letters of Heaven," a packet of recently discovered 17th-century Peruvian love letters presents a 20th-century man with the paralyzing choice of either protecting or exposing their stunning secret. When some young boys on the lookout for easy money get caught with a truckload of stolen horses, thievery quickly turns into redemption. For a group of convicts, a gathering of birds in the prison yard may be the key to transcendence, both figurative and literal. And, with the title story, Lopez enters a territory of unmitigated evil reminiscent of Conrad. Here are saints who shouldn't touch, but do; sinners who insist on the life of the spirit; a postcard paradise that turns into nightmare.
With Light Action in the Caribbean, Barry Lopez, whose fiction has been hailed as "haunting... mysterious" (Time) and "superb... exquisitely wrought" (San Francisco Chronicle), carries his central concerns place, compassion, memory, the quest of the traveler to exciting new frontiers, both geographic and emotional.
Review
"Barry Lopez's short stories are superb. Laconic, tough-minded, emotionally turbulent, and always intelligent, they are Pacific rim-shots, True West stories that connect China and Japan to Oregon and Utah, Li Po to Raymond Chandler, past to future." Russell Banks
Review
"This is a collection of subtle and mysterious stories, maps of an animistic world where travelers move beyond the reality of the senses toward spiritual recognition. The reader cannot leave Lopez's fictional territory unchanged." Annie Proulx
Synopsis
Moving from fable and historical fiction to contemporary realism, this book of stories from Barry Lopez is erotic and wise, full of irresistible characters doing things they shouldn't do for reasons that are mysterious and irreducible. In "The Letters of Heaven," a packet of recently discovered 17th-century Peruvian love letters presents a 20th-century man with the paralyzing choice of either protecting or exposing their stunning secret. When some young boys on the lookout for easy money get caught with a truckload of stolen horses, thievery quickly turns into redemption. For a group of convicts, a gathering of birds in the prison yard may be the key to transcendence, both figurative and literal. And, with the title story, Lopez enters a territory of unmitigated evil reminiscent of Conrad. Here are saints who shouldn't touch, but do; sinners who insist on the life of the spirit; a postcard paradise that turns into nightmare.
Light Action in the Caribbean has already been hailed by Russell Banks as "tough-minded, emotionally turbulent, and always intelligent." E. Annie Proulx describes these stories as "subtle and mysterious" and says that a reader "cannot leave Lopez's fictional territory unchanged." This is a book that breaks exciting new ground for Barry Lopez.
Synopsis
From the author of the National Book Award-winning "Arctic Dreams" comes a masterful new collection of stories. Moving, tender, and demonstrating an extraordinary range, this major work of short fiction is by a writer at the top of his form.
About the Author
Barry Lopez is the author of six works of nonfiction and eight works of fiction. His writing appears regularly in Harper's, The Paris Review, DoubleTake, and The Georgia Review. He is the recipient of a National Book Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and other honors. He lives in western Oregon.