Customer Reviews

Highway Trade

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Every single story has a link between the eastern U.S. coast and the western U.S. coast. Ingenious. And superb writing.

As all of Domini's work, this is a rolicking good read. He is the master of character, and he captures with a great ear and deft hand, the mood of our time and place. I recommend him highly for anybody who is alive and kicking.

Domini has done it once again. This time, Domini spills more than the usual fanfare of guts and glory as he winds us down the road toward fantastic character development and edge-of-your-seat tales. This wonderful opus is a must for any reader who enjoys escape into fantasies that unlock imagination and emotions. Truly a joyous read!

THis is a great book to escape into. Losers and unsettled types lead the reader to self evaluation. Through their struggles with the tribulations and the moral implications of the decisions they make, we face our own issues.

Lots of short stories with a lot of great imagery - enjoyed the rea

Ray Charles says that anybody can sing. But he asks, can they sing it with soul? John Domini can and does in HIGHWAY TRADE, his second collection of stories. The title story, "HIGHWAY TRADE," opens with this fetching line: "A Saturday morning when he came in, that alone made the guy look promising." That's Ernie dropping in on Nellie's tavern to watch the Series. He has seen her satellite dish from the highway. The TV blows up and the building catches fire, and all of Nell's customers stream outside. Except for Ernie, who calls the fire department. Just ordinary people in an ordinary town in Oregon, right? Well, they are and they aren't. That's the magic and appeal of Domini-crafted characters. His opening lines grab you, story after story. You can not stop reading till you get to the end, and then you're tempted to start over again. Make a place for HIGHWAY TRADE on your book shelf. It'll be staying for a while.

John Domini's stories flirt with you, tease you, take on a life of their own and draw you in. He has created fascinating realities to share.

In "Highway Trade" Domini tells stories that are intriguing, seductive, multi-layered and so very accessible. These tales resonate on so many different levels, the more layers you strip away, the more is revealed. This collection of stories and a novella holds a mirror up to the reader -- what you see looking back at you can be alternately, sometimes simultaneously, familiar, foreign, comforting, disturbing -- but always very real and believable. There is a bit of everyone in these stories. With a little surrender to the will of the storyteller, you will find parts of yourself revealed in a light you may have never considered before.

Domini knows how to describe settings, situations, knows how people behave and converse in real life, knows the rules of the games we all play with each other, knows how to take the complexities of life and reduce them down to basic simplicities; knows, too, how to take seemingly simple things and make their many individual facets sparkle.

I put the stories "The Rules of Dancing," "Senior Transfer," "Field Burning," "Minimum Bid" and the title work, "Highway Trade," on my list of best American short fiction I've read in quite a while. They are rich in detail and flavor and move along with a soft, sensual rhythm completely their own.

Reading this collection is like being at home alone in the middle of the night when all of a sudden you get the feeling that someone, something is in the room with you -- you get a chill, a prickly feeling, are perhaps reticent to look around to see what it is. And when you do, you're still alone, but the feeling that something was there won't go away, It nags at you, ultimately becomes very haunting and lingers on.

If you like Doug Lawson, Charles Baxter or Jim Harrison, give John Domini a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed.