Breece Pancake killed himself with a shotgun in Charlottesville, Virginia on Palm Sunday in 1979. He was 26 years old at the time and had just completed a graduate writing program at the University of Virginia. Four years later "The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake" was published, a collection of twelve stories that posthumously established his literary reputation as one of the finest short story writers in twentieth century American literature.

Pancake grew up in the hollows of West Virginia and each of the carefully wrought stories in this collection deals with the seemingly desperate lives of the working poor in that part of the country. They are remarkably crafted stories, written with a deep sense for the locale and the people from which they are drawn. They are also models of precision, the kind of stories that deserve to be read over and over, studied for the way in which they use foregrounding and the mundane details of everyday life--albeit everyday life that quietly screams with the desperation of poverty, deadening work, drinking, promiscuity, and brutality-to draw complex portraits of people who endure, even when endurance is no more than a substitute for hope. As he writes in "A Room Forever," the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute: "I stop in front of a bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It's always there."

The best of these stories are "Trilobites," "The Honored Dead," "Fox Hunters," and "In the Dry." But there really isn't a weak story in the bunch. Every story is captivating, every one an exemplar of what good short story writing should be. At the end, the only thing that disappoints, that leaves the reader discomforted, is the thought that Pancake died so young, that these are the only stories we have by a truly remarkable writer.

In this volume, the writer's surviving voice really hits home and stays there. Like that perfect song that stays in your head and carries you through the day, Breece Pancake's words and wisdom echoe through the reader's mind forever after reading them. In this life, there is always something around to remind of a Breece Pancake story. From the time weathered fossils in the creek beds to the rare West Virginia 120 m.p.h. strait stretches, after reading this volume I see Pancake everywhere, no matter where I am in the world. Like the trilobite preserved beneath the earth that hides it, these stories are a tangible (and for some reason widely unknown), history of a time and generation that, like the tragedy of Pancake's suicide, is destined to be repeated if ignored.

There are times when things come together in such a way that you know it's perfect. It can be a phrase of music, a blending of colors and sounds in film, or, in this case, the words of a story. This book tells stories that fall together in a timeless way, but are still firmly rooted in a specific place and time.

Having grown up in West Virginia, there were parts of these stories that spoke to me from a sort of "native" perspective. But more to it was the emotion that was the core, the skin and the stitching of each of these stories.

It's a good book to own. To read from when you feel like being taken to another place for a while. And to carry a piece of that place with you once you put the book down.

This cookbook is magnificent! With breathtaking photography,stellar production values and innovative recipes which emphasize the unique bounty of the Pacific Northwest, what more could anyone ask for in a cookbook? Grab your own copy to use and treasure forever!

Please contact me at either : hiltonpu@fedsure.co.za . . . or P O Box 371, Noordhoek, 7975, South Africa Many thanks!

I am looking for a copy. Can anyone help? Harriet

This is a book I really enjoyed and I couldn't put it down. Casey and Lexie try to solve a hundred year old mystery. While they try to solve it the janitor from the library, Jake Colby, tries to get in there way so they can't solve the mystery and even sends them a life threatining note. Casey also promised a friend in the town he used to live that he would never tell anyone an important secret that they kept between thenselves about the death of another boy.

This adventure of Casey and Lexie will capture your child up in a wholesome yet fun and exciting adventure. The couple comes across some unsolved mysterious circumstances that places them in many life and death situations, but through perseverence and quick thinking Casey and Lexie pull through with flying colors.
These days when you find a good book for your kids, grab it, and this is certainly one your kid can't miss!

I was talking to him. His book is the best every one should read jonh's book. It's like titanic only more mystery and I like it alot. jonh love you! see you on pogo karine

I have not read this book yet, but it won the 1999 Modern Language Association Prize for Independent Scholars, a great honor.

I think my mom's the best writer at Amazon.com. Everyone should buy this book!

I'm currently reading An American Romance and will go from here to find anything else John Casey has ever read or touched. The book talks about the relationship between Anya & Mac and follows the flow of their lives with a generous intensity that it opens up horizons of emotion that are left out of most contemporary characters.

That said, it takes a while to fall in to. It's written with such attention and depth that I got lost a bit in the first few pages until I shifted into a kind of reading that isn't usually demanded by modern novels. There's so much interior detail here that I had to shift into Henry James mode, and having done that, I love this book. The characters are so well drawn, so rigorously plumbed, so wide, that they give me hope in a thousand unexplainable ways. For the world, for writing in general, for humanity, even. The way this relationship is described is so non judgemental and so intelligent that the novel reads as an implicit contradiction to the title, which implies a simple romance. The love here is brutal and open but above all invented, exploratory, and engaged- the extent to which the characters and the narrator avoid the obvious is almost heroic; in that way that heroism is usually mixed with a little numb stupidity.

I haven't read Spartina, and it took me a while to get into this one, but if you liked The Half Life of Happiness you will like this one. It seems like an earlier novel to me in many ways; the voice is more rangy and less structured and the ambitions, in a strange way, are more unchecked. The Anya character reads as a younger Joss in Half Life of Happiness, so if Joss irritated you in that book (she's not easy to tolerate from a moralistic point of view) she will drive you crazy here- but if you're reading for morals or adventure Casey's not the right person for you anyways. I am stunned that this book is out of print. It's great. It's totally intimidating and redemptive and inspiring and you should read it.

MITCH SHOULD BE MAD AT HOBIE OR HOBSTER BECAUSE HE SHOULDN'T THOW A PARTY WITHOUT HIS DAD THERE AND MITCH WAS MAD AT HOBIE OR HOBSTER AND I RELLY LIKED THE BOOK ALOT. AND I RELLY LOVED THE BOOK BECAUSE HOBIE OR HOBSTER GOT INTO TRUBLE AND I WISH THAT I MEAT HOBIE OR HOBSTER AND I WISH THAT I COULD BE ON BAYWATCH.

My purpose in writing with teenagers as main characters is to portray teenagers in a positive light, courageous, persistent, and decisive. While Casey Miller and Lexie Wentworth are not perfect, the perplexing situations they find themselves in provide the means for them to solidify their relationship, to use their heads to pursue clues that ordinary people might pass up, and to find a way to resolve personal problems. In this book, Casey and Lexie unravel a large corporation involved in stolen art. Again, as they did in Mystery at Salt Marsh Bridge, they find themselves in the middle of life-threatening situations, and sadly experience the loss of a good friend in a fiery boat crash for reasons they regret.

Passionate and wild, this Home Brew Press publication features some of the best Midwestern poetry and prose being published anywhere. Editor Mary "Casey" Martin selects carefully and skillfully arranges her selections alongside some pristine images. Winter, wolves and love are the three themes celebrated, with the anthology's soaring words and brilliant illustrations (especially DeAnn De La Ronde's cover art) hammering home the concept. Especially affecting are poems by Edith Nash, Mark Scarborough, Jean Feraca and Martin herself, as well as a snippet of a biography of famed Wisconsin naturalist Frances Hamerstrom by Helen Corneli.

All in all a good book, but not five stars. Clever, smart and crazy Alessandro lost me near the end as I thought it got to be a little much with all the witty aphorisms. He got a bit over extented or maybe it was me, not knowing cotyledon, ctenidium, pneumostome, proximal, ocelli, I could not hang with him like the five star people.

I am a little in awe of what Boffa has pulled off in these parable-like stories. His anthropomorphized critters suffers pangs of love, stabs of jealousy, strains of thwarted desire, as passionately as any human Romeo/Juliet, yet still remain true to their critterly natures. From the noblest elk, to the lowliest sea-dwelling sponge, everyone is consumed by the quest for love, and the irrespresible spirit, Viskovitz, stand in the center of it all.

The author's genius lay in endowing his animal characters with just enough human attributes balanced with their "natural" concerns (i.e., a dung beetle still needs to roll you-know-what), and write the tales with aboslute deadpan seriousness.

Who hasn't looked at animals and wondered what they are thinking? In You're an Animal, Viskovitz! Boffa brings us into the minds of such animals as pigs, squirrels, parrots, fish, lab mice and my favorite the dung beetle. In each chapter he faces a different challenge (as a different animal) that is keeping him from his true love Ljuba. It is a thoroughly entertaining book that is so realistic that you would swear that Boffa spent years studying the behaviors of these animals. It will spur the imaginations of both young and old.

This book is a solid introduction that covers all the key basics. Be aware that over half the book is spent teaching Java, not JSP. Since I already know the basics of java, the numerous Java chapters were a distraction to the main point of JSP/Servlet programming. Also, being a beginner to JSP, I have to agree with an earlier reviewer that the book hurries on to each next chapter with only the barest of examples to illustrate the topic, and usually the examples are just "toys". You have to wait until the end of the book where two chapters are devoted to developing a realistic web application. The result is that you don't get a chance, as you go along, to really practice a concept and see it in various contexts. Also, I like to get into database access early in a book, since using a database is the main point of a web application. In this one, you have to wait until near the end before you learn how. Aside from these caveats, the book is clearly written, the concepts are well explained, and it covers the subject quite well.

As an experienced web developer who wants to learn JSP and Java, this book maintains just the right pace for me. I'd been trying to teach myself Java using other books, but needed a focus and frame of reference to make the study interesting.

This book provides that. The Java and JSP are woven together in a practical and digestible fashion.

I'd give it five stars, but for the occasional typos in code samples (several in Chapter 7) which cause compile or runtime errors. For a beginner, it can be frustrating to identify the source of errors and make the necessary corrections without having prior experience with the language. Still, not bad for a first edition. ...

I found this book to be very useful. I have been developing we applications now for 4 years using ASP, and I still found this book useful. I have been trying to find a good book about developing we apps, especially in JSP. It has great examples for developing the JSP page and the presentation is also excellent.The one star missing due to lack of robust code in some sections.Nevertheless,a must have book for all.