Bücher von William R. Burkett Jr.

"Women - will men ever understand them? Maybe not, but like Ish we spend our life trying."- Edward Squires, Not Quite a Novella"I was there along the sidelines, so I can attest the truth of Bill Burkett's words," says editor and anthologist Hollis George.Like Homer's Iliad, this too is an epic story, the recounting of a man's journey, in this case through a life filled with a strange species called "woman." The dedication, quoting the song To All the Girls I Loved Before, says it all. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, here is a sci-fi writer exploring the space between them. Like Moby Dick's narrator, Ishmael tells of a search with an elusive goal, understanding the women in his life.

While serving as a husky young MP in Europe, noted sci-fi author Bill Burkett kept a diary of his misadventures, encounters, romances, and sightseeing. Later, he turned these scribblings into what he calls Brautigans, so named after a writer named Richard Brautigan whose short story style he admired. Many of these stories never made it into collections of Burkett's work, so he refers to them as "orphans," unclaimed writing that have been pulled together under the general theme of soldiering. But in addition to stories of Burkett's military days you will also be treated to adventures in the Bahamas and the American northwest. "A real treat," says anthologist Hollis George, who worked with Burkett in their early newspapering days.

"One of my favorite storytellers...."- Hollis George, noted editor and anthologist"A raw novel written with the passion of memory and the experience of growing up in a beachside community on the northern corner of Florida."- Hayes Brandwell, The Polemicist PostAs a former newspaper colleague of Bill Burkett, I can certify that there is truth in this well-crafted prose..."- Pamela Paige, former feature writer, Florida Times-UnionThe time was 1959. Walter was a cook at Dawson's Famous Seafood Restaurant supporting his tubercular wife in an inland sanatorium and their daughter, who lived with her mother's parents. He was a loner who minded his own business until Corinne came to work as a waitress and he saw a chance to grab a little moment of happiness with her. But Corinne was a lodestone for dangerous men and he was on a collision course with disaster. "A nearly lost masterpiece is discovered ... modern Southern Gothic," says Shirrel Rhoades, former fiction editor for The Saturday Evening Post.