"Thomas Derr writes with warmth and
intelligence and heart-stopping clarity. His
respect for his characters -- and his readers --
is present in every line and it's a thrill
to bear witness as they shout their own
names and barrel headlong into mistakes,
all in an effort to make themselves indelible.
What renders these stories so remarkable,
however, and what makes this debut so
memorable is a profound sense of nostalgia
for the choices his characters might have
made, the lives they might have lived, the
world as it might have been."
-Michael Knight
"Telephone Road is a collection of quiet and lasting power. Each of these moving stories is
roped with muscle and laced with original, earned insight. Thomas Derr renders his deeply
flawed, deeply human characters with rare grace and lyrical prose, and with his first book, he
establishes himself as one of the country's finest young writers."
-Bret Anthony Johnston
About Telephone Road
Telephone Road lives in the after-image of the vanished object -- objects as dear to us, and as strange, as the people with whom we share our lives. This linked short story collection abandons the logic of chronology for the deeper patterns of a life captured at defining moments of renewal, suspended motion, precocious nostalgia, and even vigilante justice. Story by story, Telephone Road maps the changing boundaries of the absence at the center of the narrator's life, and is both haunted and haunting in its pursuit of fixed experience in a world that it knows to be constantly fading away. The violence wrought on domestic objects in the opening story, 'Housebreaking,' echoes the theme of the stories to come as we wind our way back through the narrator's various homes, with their disparate styles and their emblematic objects, toward the narrator's formative years and foundational experiences.News &
Events
Writers and Their Regions
The Honors College, University of Houston
June 28, July 1-3, July 8-12, 2013
Colgate Writers' Conference
Tuesday, June 19th
7:30 pm