Overview

Ride shotgun down the back-roads of the Great Plains as Reese becomes Willy the Wildcat at a small Division II school, drives a tractor into an outbuilding his first week on the job, and discovers, sometimes with horror, the truth - after immersing himself in the lives of strangers, friends and prisoners. Travel to San Quentin prison in San Francisco Bay where he has full access and isn't afraid to ask the tough questions. Join him in a superstore pharmacy prophylactic aisle. Explore teenage angst and desire with him at a Midwest skating rink. Accompany him as he archives his mother-in-law's peculiarities, often verbatim. Reese was born in Iowa, but moved to Omaha at age seven where he grew up in what passes for the big city in Nebraska. He married into a farm family, moved to northeast Nebraska, and this book captures the disparity between urban and rural America. He takes sympathetic, comic, and serious looks at the people he writes about, offering a humorous and equally critical view of himself. He captures those moments in the belly of the heartland, where all are welcome to the strangeness of good company and rural behaviors, and in doing so, these essays record the zeitgeist of the time. The intersections of Reese's stories about the incarcerated or genuine mid-western sensibilities allow readers to take the reins and become part of his ongoing journey to find his place in the world. Reese is a wandering minstrel, and as the author of four widely-praised books of poetry, he knows how to blow our hearts sideways. JIM REESE'S NEW BOOK is what we might think of as 'an evening's entertainment, ' and it's an enriching entertainment at that, witty and funny, shadowed by feelings deeper and more meaningful, a kind of operetta in prose, and it will stick with me for a good long while. I recommend it. -Ted Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 13th Poet Laureate of the United States JIM REESE... HE'S OUR MARK TWAIN of this century ... Jim writes about the everyday experience, and he, in my view, is therefore America's poet. -Grace Cavalieri, from the Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress Jim Reese's Bone Chalk is like a strong shot of rye, a piercing look from a stranger, or a stray bullet in the dark. There is a startling honesty that slams you against the wall by the throat and holds you there until you see the truth, a unique perspective into the world of true crime from a gifted writer. -Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire novels, the basis for the Netflix drama Longmire

Full Product Details

9781622884148

Table of Contents

Reviews

From essay to essay, Reese bemusedly works to sort it out-blessedly, without a hint of Garrison Keillor's labored folksiness. In one comic piece, Reese recalls his ill-fated stint as Willy the Wildcat. . . . alcohol, come-ons, and physical abuse all came with the job. . . . But the narrative's true centerpiece is an essay reconciling his childhood fears growing up in Omaha with his hesitance to teach writing in prisons, something he's done for a dozen years regardless. There, he masterfully weaves his personal history with observations of the prison system both intimately (in the prisoner's writings, their tattoos, the strict regulations) and broadly (the troubled prison system, race and class divides). . . . the variety is the appeal, and Reese is skilled in many registers. . . . An eclectic, appealingly no-nonsense set of appreciations of the heartland. -Kirkus Review ...Reese's central concern is nothing less than the nature of evil and how best to deal with it. His school-boy experience of city-wide panic in Omaha during a wave of killings, and a few years later the murder of a friend, leave no room for naivete or a Hollywood-style glamorization of crime...Reese also knows that the difference between a man on the street and a man in a cell is most often no more than a bad decision...This effort to change the lives of these men charges Reese's teaching. And it will charge readers of this book... -Cleveland Review of Books The publication of this collection announces Jim Reese as a major writer on the Midwest in all its shades - lively and bright, somber and muted, violent and dark. Readers of all backgrounds will come away from his writings with a deeper understanding of the Midwest and of the human spirit itself. -Omaha World Herald This author has the ability to morph from Green Acres scenarios into situations more suitable to Breaking Bad without missing a beat. The reader will be transported from Fordyce, Nebraska to San Quentin prison with the turn of a page... Reese, finds universal truths in his work. Readers will discover that love of family, decency, honesty, and a sense of humor are not limited to any particular region of the country. -Lincoln Journal Star South Dakota writer Jim Reese's new book BONE CHALK is a collection of rural life, written with the thoughtful story-telling skills that we expect from a practiced poet...Much of this book is good humor about the beautiful idiosyncrasies of country living. However, one of the longest and most serious chapters is Reese's reckoning with crime, violence and the prison culture. Few writers have gained such a close-up view of life behind bars in South Dakota. -South Dakota Magazine

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available