Fiction. Includes full-color illustrations by Haeri Yoo. In RANCHO WEIRDO, Laura Chester's new collection of short stories, life on the U.S./Mexican border presents a clash of cultures and expectations that is explored with insight and dark humor. Chester's short fiction, accompanied by Haeri Yoo's quirky drawings, challenge our perceptions of the new Southwest--which includes snowbirds, illegal immigrants, Native Americans, ranchers, and cowboys--whose fates intertwine in the harsh and beautiful Arizona landscape. Laura Chester has edited six widely-praised literary anthologies, most recently Eros & Equus: A Passion for the Horse (Willow Creek Press), with exquisite black and white photographs by Donna DeMari. "RANCHO WEIRDO is a wonderful book and will thoroughly enliven any reader of serious fiction"--Jim Harrison.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Laura Chester has written many volumes of poetry, prose, and nonfiction. Most recently, Willow Creek Press published her first two children's books, Hiding Glory, and Marvel the Marvelous, as well as Heartbeat for Horses. A few of Chester's other books include Lupus Novice, The Story of the Lake, Kingdom Come, and Sparks. She lives in Patagonia, Arizona, as well as the Berkshires of Massachusetts.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
New Twist on Short Story,
By
This review is from: Rancho Weirdo (Paperback)
If you are looking for a traditional and conventional short stories, something wrapped up in a cute little package and with the daring of vanilla ice cream, then this book isn't for you.
Laura Chester's prose strikes a different course. Story lines jump up from the page, dreams and reality mix and dance, the traditional structure of a story with beginning, crises and resolution are cast aside, in favor of less resolved but equally satisfying endings. More Haiku and less limerick. When approached with an open mind, these stories have a chance to surprise and challenge a reader and as such are a breath of fresh air.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
...wickedly funny,
This review is from: Rancho Weirdo (Paperback)
The stories in RANCHO WEIRDO are wickedly funny and Chester's free, loose writing hand is to be totally admired. YOO's marvelous drawings are sneaky weeds. They're everywhere. The discordant notes of story and image are completely disorienting. If you like not knowing where you are, I highly recommend. SB
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Carne Asada,
By Anon (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rancho Weirdo (Paperback)
CARNE ASADA
Rancho Weirdo by Laura Chester with drawings by Haeri Yoo exposes the nakedness of the naive and "The Baghdad Café like life" of living along the border that has a language of its own. Spanish and English are integrated in the idiom of the prose, reflecting the language of the border communities spoken and broken and the dialect of the Diaspora. Laura Chester deliciously voices this in her burnt around the edges, uncommonly clear, writing style. It reads like all the various cuts of beef. If it's chuck or round, then you'll need to marinate and cook S-L-O-W-L-Y to tenderize it. But if it's rib, and written by a woman, it will already be tender. The outside is seared, the flavor locked in, but it's kept raw. 17 short stories are written in vivid boldness, evoking the rawness of human emotion, with the descriptive word leaving mesquite smoke to linger around like unvoiced thoughts. This book carries the broken resonance of a sonnet with subtly instructive neorealism. It is genuine and uncontrived. Read it out loud with a friend in bed and it's funny and vividly present. Listen in between the lines to its essential ingredient of salty dialogue and it's disturbing. The quirky magic hidden in the patterns of the ordinary. Imaginative potentialities disturbing like flesh itself. All of this emerges in these bedtime stories for adults. They are sound bits of literature with the beat of an untainted heart. Recommend it to lovers of speculative fiction, especially those who have a taste for fantasy and the politically incorrect. Food and a good book. Back at the ranch, fear no gristle, but chew.
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