Bøger af Bill Meissner

"A storyteller with remarkable gifts." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The Wonders of the Little World is a compelling novel that, like a journey down the midway of a colorful carnival, is filled with mystery and magic, surprise and wonder. Estelle Esmeralda, a fortune teller in a suffocating, small-scale carnival, is unable to predict her own future, much less discover where her missing husband has gone. With their precocious eleven-year-old daughter riding along, Estelle sets out on a road trip to search for Tony, a charismatic tightrope walker who disappeared suddenly on a quest to rectify his past. Interspersed between Estelle and Tony's chapters are secret journal entries by the spunky Ariel, who fills the pages with creative observations about her life within the unique and sometimes puzzling confines of the carnival. The Wonders of the Little World will delight the reader like a free-wheeling thrill ride that leads straight to the heart. With its unforgettable main characters trying to discover their place in the world, the story explores the thin lines between truth and lies, between who someone is and who they want to be. Part road trip across 1960s America, part love story, and part illumination of a family struggling to heal itself, this novel immerses the reader into a world that is not only entertaining but also moving and, ultimately, enlightening. Bill Meissner's prose is simultaneously a subtle and high-wire act, and his story-telling talents are on full display in The Wonders of the Little World. This new novel is both haunting and lovely as Meissner brings this gallery of irresistible, compassionately rendered carnival characters to life. And to a way of life: unique, nomadic, and most of all, emotionally riveting at every stop along the way. -- Jack Driscoll, author of 20 Stories: New & Selected Bill Meissner is such a beautiful writer. I admire his voice, his eye for detail, and his gentle humor, and The Wonders of the Little World might be his best novel yet. I was hooked from page one, and ready to follow Ariel, Estelle, and Tony wherever the road might take them. There's wonder and magic in these pages. -- Shannon Olson, author of Welcome to My Planet: Where English is Sometimes Spoken Regarding Meissner's previous novel, National Book Award winner Tim O'Brien stated, "Meissner has the storyteller's gift for creating living characters, living speech, living emotions, living drama. He knows the workings of the human heart."

In "The Mapmaker and His Woman," the mapmaker narrator travels, in a few short hours, to Budapest, Salamanca, Punta Cana and Dusseldorf, but always returns home to the woman he loves. In another poem, Harry Houdini's critics attempt to suppress his opinions and negate his magical powers. In "The Groundskeeper's Teenage Daughters," young girls speak out against their domineering, controlling father. A prize-winning poem features the haunting voice of the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, who talks about her image appearing in her favorite mirror and how it effects the men who see it. The poems take you to variety of unique places: to a small Mexican village in the Yucatan, to the treacherous Gulf waters between Cuba and Florida, to a traveling carnival, to Bob Dylan's north country back roads, to outer space, a million miles from earth, then back to the isolated county roads in the rural heartland. Many poems focus on personal experiences, including childhood incidents and relationships with mothers, fathers and lovers. One section of the book, entitled "Borders: In Some Other Country," throws a spotlight on political and social issues, with wry and poignant poems about the repression of free speech, the use of nuclear weapons, gender roles, and the prevalence of gun violence. Another section in the collection features characterizations of famous American icons such as Albert Einstein, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, James Dean, and the 19th century classic poet, Walt Whitman. These poems reverberate beyond the celebrities to make unique comments about American life and culture. Sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, the poems in The Mapmaker's Dream take you on journeys to places you never expected to go, and to characters you never dreamed you'd meet.

With its roots in a true but little-known incident involving the aerial bombing of a Midwest powder production plant in 1969, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire is a family conflict that illuminates the struggle between conservative and liberal, between conformity and independent thought. It portrays the effects of a war that was fought not only on foreign soil, but in living rooms in the middle of America. Above all, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire is an illumination of the timeless conflicts on the battlefield of the human heart. It's the spring of 1967, during the turbulent protest days of the Vietnam War. Eighteen-year-old Phil Keyhoe takes a summer job mowing lawns at the Strongs Ammunition Plant, a place that manufactures powder for use in the Vietnam War. His father, Karl, a powerful security supervisor at the plant and World War II hero, has arranged the job for Phil. When Phil's father faces a medical crisis, Phil is forced to put his college plans with Mariah, a rebellious new love interest, on hold and work full time in the gunpowder production lines. Meanwhile, Mariah joins a radical anti-war group and becomes involved with its charismatic leader. As her commitment against the war intensifies, she plans to orchestrate a major protest against the Strongs Plant. Phil is caught in a web of indecision and must choose between his loyalty to his father and his feelings for Mariah. The choice he finally makes not only affects him, but his father and mother, the plant, and the entire town. > "This novel captures those small, powerful details that combine to produce an indelible image of one of the most wrenching eras in our nation's history. Bill Meissner has the storyteller's gift for creating living characters, living speech, living emotions, living drama. The novel will not only entertain--in the highest sense--but will also touch the reader's heart." --Tim O'Brien, National Book Award winner and author of The Things They Carried "A storyteller with remarkable gifts." > At the center of this compelling novel is the Keyhoe family-- stern Karl at the helm, sensitive teenage son, Phil, and the quietly heroic and eminently likeable Frances, wife and mother, holding the family together--each of them trying to do what's right, motivated by duty and love. Those tensions propel this beautifully crafted and, at times, gently funny novel--a story of families and community in conflict, cultural upheaval, and, ultimately, hope for change. --Shannon Olson Author of Welcome to My Planet and Children of God Go Bowling From the opening explosion to the ending, Meissner's new novel is full of surprises as it delivers one of the best stories ever written about the most divisive period in modern American culture. As he explores the fractures of our families and country from the war in Vietnam, he paints the anguish and heartbreak we are still struggling to heal from. Although the novel is historical, it reverberates with contemporary politics that have set us against each other. In brilliant prose, Meissner evokes both the beauty and the cruelty that are hallmarks of that time of liberation and challenging questions. This is Meissner's finest portrait of the American heartland, torn, broken and resilient in its embrace of ordinary lives in the midst of extraordinary times. --Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise The compassion, sensitivity, and quiet exuberance of Bill Meissner's prose and storytelling abilities combine to make Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire a deeply moving and unforgettable tale. Set is small-town Midwestern America in the late 1960s, the novel both defines and transcends time and place with a grace and originality I find rare and utterly compelling. Sentence by sentence, detail by detail--a writer at the height of his powers. --Jack Driscoll, author of 20 Stories: New and Selected

Bill Meissner's fourth book of poetry, is a collection that steers the reader on a varied, memorable journey down the American highway. Like the four points of a compass, each of the book's four sections has a distinct direction.

When Bill Meissner's collection of short stories Hitting into the Wind was published in 1994, it was called "e;a quiet masterpiece of baseball writing"e; by the Greensboro, North Carolina, News and Record. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said, "e;Bill Meissner captures baseball with all its crystalline beauty-the remarkable reverberation of time and space and character."e; And The New York Times Book Review said, "e;Just about every tale here recalls those precious years when a chance to play in the majors was all a boy could ask from life."e; Now, in his first novel, Bill Meissner again uses baseball as a window to his characters. In Spirits in the Grass, we meet Luke Tanner, a thirty-something ball player helping to build a new baseball field in his beloved hometown of Clearwater, Wisconsin. Luke looks forward to trying out for the local amateur team as soon as possible. His chance discovery of a small bone fragment on the field sets in motion a series of events and discoveries that will involve his neighbors, local politicians, and the nearby Native American reservation. Luke's life, most of all, will be transformed. His growing obsession with the ball field and what's beneath it threatens his still fragile relationship with his partner, Louise, and challenges Luke's assumptions about everyone, especially himself. Spirits in the Grass rings true with small-town Midwestern values. The characters, including Luke's independent partner Louise, grapple with their passion and their identities. In this beautiful and haunting novel, baseball serves as a metaphor for life itself, with its losses and defeats, its glories and triumphs.

Explores the consciousness of Cosmos, USA, a small town that is anything but ordinary. Though it has its share of residents intent on keeping the world on an even keel, Cosmos is blessed with a healthy number of eccentrics who are chasing their dreams, idiosyncratic as they may be, or struggling to distinguish themselves as individuals.