Day out of days : stories / Sam Shepard

Kitchen -- Haskell, Arkansas (Highway 70) -- Chatter -- Williams, Arizona (Highway 40 West) -- Duarte -- One night in the Long-Ago -- Indianapolis (Highway 74) -- These recent beheadings -- Classic embrace -- Alpine, Texas (Highway 90) -- Mission San Juan Capistrano -- Pity the poor Mercenary -- Quanah, Texas -- Pea Ridge Battlefield, Arkansas -- San Juan Bautista (Highway 152) -- Brain fever -- Tops -- Thor's Day (Highway 81 North, Staunton, Virginia) -- Cracker Barrel men's room (Highway 90 West) -- Face -- Costello -- Time line -- Shame -- Esmeralda and the flipping hammer (Highway 152, continued) -- Tet offensive -- Mean green -- Poolside musings in sunny L.A. -- Seminole, Texas -- Las Vegas, New Mexico -- Nauvoo, Illinois -- Little people -- These days--Grand Canyon -- Lost art of wandering (Highway 152, continued) -Duke of Earl -- Taos -- Wyoming (Highway 80 East) -- Buffalo trace --Our dwelling is but a wandering -- Original sin -- Comanche --Choirboy once -- Cat in a barn at night -- Philip, South Dakota (Highway 73) --Nephophobia (Veterans Highway) -- Victorville, California (Highway 15)-- Elko, Nevada (Thunderbird Motel) -- Llanos -- Faith, South Dakota (Interstate 25) -- Reason -- Horses racing men -- Man o'war -- "Shoe" -- Lightning man -- Saving fats -- Bossier City, Louisiana (Highway 220) -- Shreveport, Louisiana -- Casey Moan -- Mr. Williams -- Five spot -- Knoxville, Tennessee (Highway 40) -- Head in the world -- Suddenly -- Tall thin white man -- Perpetual warrior -- Livingston, Montana -- Lost whistle -- She -- Majesty (Highway 101 South) -- Bright spots -- High Noon Moon (Highway 152, continued) -- Orange Grove in my past -- Kingman, Arizona (Andy Devine Boulevard) -- Van Horn, Texas (Highway 10) -- Mercenary takes a stab at self-improvement -- Interview in Cafe Pascual -- June bugs -- Herdbound -- Nine below -- Stillwater -- Dawson, Minnesota (Highway 212 East) -- Demon in the woods -- Gardening in the dark -- Happy man -- Promising two-year-old -- Mandan, North Dakota (Highway 94) -- Miles City, Montana (Highway 94 West) -- Wichita, Kansas (Highway 35 North) -- Valentine, Nebraska (Highway 20) -- Christopher Columbus -- Devil's music (Montana, Highway 2) -- I can make a deal -- Butte, Montana -- Get out of Butte altogether -- Ft. Robinson, Nebraska (Highway 20) -- Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation -- Roseud, South Dakota (Highway 83 North) -- I thought there was a hawk -- Mojado -- Normal (Highway 39 South) -- Elkhorn River -- Horse -- Descendancy -- Durango, Mexico -- Tulum, Mexico -- Boca Paila, Mexico -- Mosquitoes -- Quintana Roo, Mexico -- Dogs really know -- Land of the living -- Screened-in porch -- Clarksville, Missouri (Little Dixie Highway) -- Where are we now? -- The head reflects -- Bernalillo -- We sat around in rosy candlelight -- Black oath -- Paul -- Things you learn from others -- Rape and pillage -- Should he head north -- Lost coin -- Circling -- There's a man in a pay phone -- Back in the woods -- Holyoke -- One stone -- Regrets of the head -- Indio, California -- Wisconsin wilderness -- Distant songs of madman -- These pills -- Rogers, Arkansas (Highway 62) -- Gracias.

From one of our most admired writers: a collection of stories set mainly in the fertile imaginative landscape of the American West, written with the terse lyricism, cinematic detail, and wry humor that have become Sam Shepard's trademarks. A man traveling down Highway 90 West gets trapped alone overnight inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where he is tormented by an endless loop of Shania Twain songs on the overhead sound system. A wandering actor returns to his hometown against his better instincts and runs into an old friend, who recounts their teenage days of stealing cars, scoring Benzedrine, and sleeping with whores in Tijuana. A Minnesota family travels south for a winter vacation but, caught up in the ordinary tyrannies of family life, remains oblivious to the beauty of the Yucatán Peninsula. A solitary horse rancher muses on Sitting Bull and Beckett amid the jumble of stuff in his big country kitchen - from rusted spurs and Lakota dream-catchers to yellowing pictures of hawks and galloping horses to - snapshots of different sons in different shirts doing different things like fishing, riding mules and tractors; leaning up against their different mothers at radical angles. Made up of short narratives, lyrics, and dialogues, Day out of Days sets conversation against tale, song against memory, in a cubistic counterpoint that finally links each piece together. The result is a stunning work of vision and clarity imbued with the vivid reverberations of myth - Shepard at his flinty-eyed, unwavering best.