Böcker utgivna av V Press LC

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Latin America, this semi-autobiographical novel follows the transformative journey of an idealistic, naive Peace Corps Volunteer named Peter, whose life takes an unexpected turn when tragedy strikes his remote village in Paraguay propelling him on a harrowing escape with a semi-homeless 12-year-old boy. ¿Their journey takes them through an indigenous community, a Mennonite colony, a squatters camp, and, finally, the lawless and chaotic city of Ciudad del Este. There, Peter confronts profound truths about himself, his faith, and the fluidity of memory. With the aid of a kind transgender sex worker who challenges his perspective on life and survival, Peter discovers he must forge a new path to redemption.

Lyrics for Rock Stars is a collection of seventeen stories¿some historical, some contemporary- all set in the West. Involving skiers, ranchers, cyclists, suffragettes, tourists, super models, dead pigs, burro racers, religious beet farmers, immigrant miners, scorned lovers, penitent centenarians, and musicians, they are as varied as the region's landscape. Some involve kids surviving the choices of the adults around them. Some involve those adults. Three of the stories are humorous. In one story, a fourteen-year-old girl's sexual awakening takes form in a crush on an older cowboy as she starts to understand her parents' rocky history. In another, an eight-year-old girl is forced to comfort her pregnant mother on the night her father has left for another woman. In the title story, a very pregnant gold-digger understands the error of her ways and, spurred by a meeting with a singing hippie, tries to start a new life. All of the stories explore how society's values clash with our individual desires, and the ways we weave our lives through these opposing forces, often creating not of a lifeline, but a noose.

A Month's Worth of Instructional Poems is a poetic handbook for exploring humanity through a surreal lens. This book elevates the mortality of the human experience and enhances one's life view. With an eye on nature and the everyday, these short prose poems explore the world not as it is, but as it would be if poetry was in the foreground of the human experience. The poems manage at once to be playful, light, and even comical while still being deeply meaningful and far-reaching. With language that is accessible and purposeful, diction that sounds like a friendship, and images that sizzle in one's memory long after the mind's eye imagines them, A Month's Worth of Instructional Poems is full of the kind of with and wisdom that sticks around after the book is read and re-shelved.