Loaded for Bear: Adventures and Misadventures from the Appalachians to the Chesapeake

The stories in Loaded for Bear are told through the voice of a male narrator. But he is a shape shifter, ranging in age from a boy to a retiree, and holding forth from each of the decades in between.

We encounter him, variously, as a city newspaper boy and as a farmette preteen; a Vietnam War draftee and a young father and groom-to-be; frightened son and a troubled veteran; a brother and bereaved lover; a divorced single father of adolescent girls, then grown daughters; a dutiful nephew and reluctant farmyard midwife; a colleague forced to interview a Palestinian immigrant for his Green Card certification. And once, apparently, as one of a circle of female cousins.

In each encounter, we find ourselves invited observers in alternative universes, as befuddled as the unwitting characters by the circumstances that enwrap them.

The stories in Loaded for Bear are told through the voice of a male narrator. But he is a shape shifter, ranging in age from a boy to a retiree, and holding forth from each of the decades in between.

We encounter him, variously, as a city newspaper boy and as a country preteen; a Vietnam War draftee and a young father and groom-to-be; frightened son and a troubled veteran; a brother and bereaved lover; a divorced single father of adolescent girls, then grown daughters; a dutiful nephew and reluctant farmyard midwife; a colleague forced to interview a Palestinian immigrant for his Green Card certification. And once, apparently, as one of a circle of female cousins.

In each encounter, we find ourselves invited observers in alternative universes, as befuddled as the unwitting characters by the circumstances that enwrap them.