Bigfoots in Paradise

(Paperback)

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Description

Beauty and terror collide in Doug Lawson's Bigfoots in Paradise, a wild new collection of stories set largely in and around Santa Cruz, California and the surrounding mountains. It's a land tucked between Silicon Valley and the Pacific Ocean, one that's populated by aging hippies and venture capitalist sharks, pot farmers and surfe

Reviews

"Vivid . . . haunting . . . assured and atmospheric" -Booklist

The characters in Lawsons vivid story collection harbor quiet regret as they mine the boundaries of their lives and relationships. The standout, The Mushroom Hunter, follows narrator Barnaby as he travels to Santa Cruz to visit his old high-school friend and ex-musician Chundo, who forages for mushrooms to sell. Matters become complicated with the arrival of the combative Laurel and her precocious young son, Deke, who may or may not be Chundos. In the haunting Catch in the Air, an adult son struggles to care for his headstrong, ailing father. Things go awry when a birthday celebration and surprise reunion usher in demons from the past. House on Bear Mountain portrays a widow in the aftermath of her husbands harrowing death when an unexpected interaction causes her to begin to inch toward a resolution. The intense The Night Witches finds Beth in the midst of a crumbling marriage when a long-lost friend mysteriously reenters her life. Assured and atmospheric, Lawsons eight tales offer blistering journeys as characters grasp for the resolve to push on despite their disenchantment.

Leah Strauss

Author Bio

Doug Lawsons fiction has been cited as a 2014 Distinguished Story by the Best American anthology, received an Honorable Mention from the O. Henry Awards, and has appeared in a good number of literary publications, including multiple times in Glimmer Train Stories and the Mississippi Review, as well as in Passages North, the Sycamore Review, and other places. Hes won Glimmer Trains yearly Fiction Open competition, received a Transatlantic Review Award for fiction, a Henfield award, and a fiction fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Doug and his family live in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California and in Charlottesville, Virginia.