Hawk Moon: Short Stories, Poems, and Monologues

Seven drunk nurses are attacked by seven twelve year olds on customized Schwinns. A young man covers a nude female corpse with hundred dollar bills and plays Rolling Stones songs to her just before he burns her in the bathtub. A bored guitarist reaches orgasm with his Gibson. A traveler is tormented by a dead raven's feather. These and other stories and poetry make up playwright Sam Shepard's first foray into fiction and poetry (originally published in 1973). His major themes here include blood and violence, sex, love, and America. For any Shepard fan, this is a must-read. Shepard's images of America--the dry, flat desert, the endless highway, the seedy motel--are so dead-on that we are right there with his characters, looking over their shoulders as they commit sins and/or try to find some good in this world. Read it with Shepard's CRUISING PARADISE and MOTEL CHRONICLES.

Sam Shepard is one of the unheralded geniuses in American literature. This book, his first foray as far as I know into a 'scrap book' style of fiction, is beautiful, delicate, powerful, intimitely connected to the natural world and perhaps the world of spirits, as well as a pre-cursor to his future prose, poems and plays. If you wish to experience an America that has for the most part vanished for forever, an America that is rarely talked about in truth on our cable, radio, and internet, then pick up either this book, Motel Chronicles, or Cruising Paradise. All three are unique companion pieces, spread some twenty five years apart in publication, and well worth owning.