rec - Stories

Palouse is a coming-to-maturity story of a half-Navajo boy who is a virtuoso at violin. The story traces his rise, fall, and reemergence in the context of a domineering mother. It is a story also of a developing love between the boy and a gay friend.

The Palouse Writing Project is intended to look at the nuts and bolts of writing a novel, Palouse, about the coming of age of and the coming of maturity to a young prodigy musician and the love that grows between him and a young musician.

Jake’s Side is a continuation of Jake's Hand, which looks at the same story from Jake’s point of view.

Two college men who have volunteered to tutor black kids for the 1969 summer in the South grow more and more attracted to one another. But the summer ends before they realize the full extent of their love for one another, and they go separate ways—one to get married and have children, the other to join the military and go to Vietnam.