آبی‌های تیرانداز: یک رمان

ALA Notable Book; Mississippi Arts and Letters Fiction Award. Lewis Nordan's remarkable third novel, THE SHARPSHOOTER BLUES, is in part a meditation on America's love affair with blue-steel barrels and soft-tip bullets, and in part a look at the violence and loss that ensue when the guns come out to play one day in a small town. Just as his award-winning WOF WHISTLE illuminated the complexity of racism, Nordan's new novel shines the brilliant flash of gunfire on love--between fathers and sons, between husbands and wives, between gay lovers, and between friends. At its heart is Hydro Raney, a boy who's never grown up, a boy who wouldn't hurt a soul. In THE SHARPSHOOTER BLUES, Nordan once again makes us laugh; then our helpless laughter turns first into weeping and then into wonder. "A comedy at least half as divine--and dark--as Dante's own . . . a flat-out tour de force."--Lee K. Abbott, Miami Herald; "This is not just a good book, this is a marvelous book."-The Village Voice. The first question this remarkable new tale of mayhem and misunderstanding asks is: Who is singing the Sharpshooter Blues? Is it Morgan, the teenage trick-shot artist, who stops by The William Tell grocery in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, one day to show off some fancy moves? Or is it Marshal Chisolm who enforces Law and Order? Or is it one of the two lovely children who pick the wrong country store to rob? Or is it maybe Hydro Raney, a sweet, simple boy who does the right thing and loses everything? But the story asks a deeper question: Can the power of love hold up to the power of bullets? Don't expect an easy answer, for, as one Arrow Catcher citizen puts it, "You wouldn't want to hurt anybody, but when you were singing the blues...sometimes there was just nothing as satisfying as shooting a gun inside a house...it relieved stress, it cemented relationships, strangers or partners in marriage...it cleared the air.". The Sharpshooter Blues is, in part, an exuberant meditation on America's love affair with blue-steel barrels and snub-nose bullets, and in part, a heartbreaking look at the violence and loss that ensue when the guns come out to play one day in a small town. But most of all, after the bullets have flown, it's a story of love - between fathers and sons, between husbands and wives, between gay lovers, and between longtime neighbors and friends. Two youths walk into a store in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, and are shot. Murder, self-defense or accident? Marshall Chisolm's probe turns into an examination of the violence and loss which result when guns come out to play in a small town. By the author of Wolf Whistle