The Memory of Running Resources
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Further Reading
Dave King, The Ha-Ha (2005)
Howard Kapostash was wounded in Vietnam and has not been able to speak, read, or write for more than two decades. When an old girlfriend leaves her son with Howard while she goes into rehab, he begins to discover the importance of family and communication as his rather dull existence must expand to include the boy.

Sam Lipsyte, Home Land (2005)
Lewis Miner comments on life after graduation through a series of letters to the editor of an alumni newsletter in this comic novel. The things he writes are not the sorts of things that will ever get printed in the newsletter because they are far too insightful. This book challenges the gray land between hope for the future and the reality that exists.

Sandra Kring, Carry Me Home (2005)
After a high fever, Earl "Earwig" Gunderman is left with brain damage. At sixteen, he and his family face World War II from small town Wisconsin. When his older brother Jimmy comes home from Bataan, the entire family must struggle with the reality that the war has changed him permanently.

Anita Shreve, Light on Snow (2004)
Recent widower Robert Dillon comes across an abandoned baby while out walking in the New Hampshire woods with his twelve-year-old daughter Nicky. An adult Nicky tells the story as one of coping with the pain of loss felt by both father and daughter.

Lolly Winston, Good Grief (2004)
Thirty-six-year-old Sophie Stanton is forced to deal with the death of her computer programmer husband. She decides to quit the public relations business and move to Oregon from Silicon Valley. There she moves in with her best friend and begins to rebuild her life.

Nicole Krauss, The History of Love (2005)
The last words of this haunting novel resonate like a pealing bell. "He fell in love. It was his life." This is the unofficial obituary of octogenarian Leo Gursky, a character whose mordant wit, gallows humor and searching heart create an unforgettable portrait. Born in Poland and a WWII refugee in New York, Leo has become invisible to the world. When he leaves his tiny apartment, he deliberately draws attention to himself to be sure he exists. What's really missing in his life is the woman he has always loved, the son who doesn't know that Leo is his father, and his lost novel, called The History of Love, which, unbeknownst to Leo, was published years ago in Chile under a different man's name.

Kris Radish, Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn (2005)
Everything changes and the very foundation of her life comes into question when Meg witnesses her husband having sex with another woman on her bed in her suburban Chicago home. In order to find her way to a new life, Meg, along with three friends, re-creates the journey to Mexico that her favorite aunt took as a young woman.

Melody Carlson, Finding Alice (2003)
For years, Alice's "little idiosyncrasies" were excused for her high intelligence, but during her senior year at college it becomes apparent that she is suffering from schizophrenia and must now cope with new demons and "treatments." Powerfully raw and brutally honest, Finding Alice is a story of individual suffering and hope, a family’s shared ordeal, and a search for true mental and spiritual healing.

Carter Coleman, Cage’s Bend (2005)
Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s American South, three archetypal sons witness the unraveling of their tight-knit family as they struggle with ambitions, tragic death, and mental illness. Told through the voices of Cage, Harper, Franklin, and Margaret, this novel captures the poignancy of the conflicting dynamics of family: competition, jealousy, and protectiveness. It creates memorable and arresting characters who step off the page. Often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and very wise, this is a powerful new voice in southern literature.

Morag Joss, Half Broken Things (2005)
Follows the lives of three strangers--an aging house sitter, a struggling con man, and a young pregnant woman--who seek refuge at Walden Manor, a remote country estate, as they attempt to rebuild their individual lives.

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (1990)
"In the end. . .a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." O’Brien’s own words describe his “war novel.” Just when you thought there was nothing left to say about the Vietnam experience. . .there's plenty

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
Published a decade after the death of the author, this wildly inventive comic masterpiece features one of the most unforgettable characters in modern fiction: Ignatius Reilly, a mammoth misfit Medievalist hilariously at odds with the 20th-century world.

Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1997)
In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to a charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet and invented a life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. Jon Krakauer brings Chris McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows and illuminates it with meaning in this mesmerizing and heartbreaking tour de force. A non-fiction title that depicts another trek ‘into the wild,’ with far different results.

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (2003)
Christopher Boone is a fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a great deal about math and very little about human beings. When he finds his neighbor’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his world upside down.

Related Links
Ron McLarty’s web side introduces you to Ron and tells you about his acting career as well as his writing career.
BookPage interview with Ron McLarty

Resource Archive for past RARI selections