Bad girl Perdita Durango and her dealer boyfriend Romeo Dolorosa get their kicks on a journey from Louisiana to Los Angeles that involves santeria rituals and kidnapping.

The author of Wild at Heart and The Wild Life of Sailor and Lula writes of what Tennessee Williams called "something wild in the country/that only the night people know." He draws his characters from the shadows of the Deep South, where they confront the chaotic horror of the United States at the end of the twentieth century.

New stories and collected short novels about recurring character Roy, with episodes from his life ages 5 to 17. The first section ('The Vast Difference') features Gifford's latest stories appearing in book form for the first time.

From the acclaimed author of Wild at Heart and Night People comes an innovative and exquisitely nuanced work written in the form of a classical Japanese "pillow book"--a collection of short tales grouped around a central theme. The result is an almost Zen-like tour through--and beyond--the realm of the senses.

A world of poems as populous and diverse as it is ephemeral and evanescent, born of the world and of books and art in equal measure, yielding granite truths and feather truths of people's roller-coaster lives. The poet looks back, facing life and death and everything in between with equanimity, holding a steady hand to the quivering breast wherever there is breath.
Published in "The New Yorker," "La Nouvelle Revue Francaise," and in nearly a hundred magazines and poetry journals from Los Angeles to Tokyo, from Lawrence, Kansas to Rome, Madrid, Paris, London, Beijing, and Bucharest, poems by Barry Gifford have been describing and changing our world for nearly half a century. Here in one volume for the first time is the poet's own choices from his nine previous collections, as well as a rich selection of new poems. "Imagining Paradise" sums up the tremendous achievement of an underground poet who lasted.

A vivid and unflinching coming-of-age portrait set within the violent humanity of 1960s Chicago.

The Imagination of the Heart is the final chapter in the saga of Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune, the "Romeo and Juliet of the Deep South." Their story began in Barry Gifford's novel Wild at Heart, which in 1990 was made into a Palme d'Or-winning feature film by David Lynch. Following Sailor's death at the age of sixty-five in New Orleans, Lula moved back to her home state of North Carolina. This novel begins fifteen years later when Lula, at age eighty, decides to write a memoir in diary form, reflecting on her life with Sailor while also keeping a journal describing her last road trip: a journey with Beany Thorn, her best friend since childhood, back to New Orleans.
Like a contemporary book of Revelations, dutifully recorded by Lula as a dialogue between self and soul, it becomes a bittersweet, often dangerous journey into the imagination of the heart, and what may lie beyond.
Also included in this edition is "The Truth is in the Work," a conversation between Barry Gifford and Noel King which delves into a range of topics, from Gifford's early publishing experiences to his film projects and to professional sports.

Revolution is simmering in the heat of the battered Central America town Port Tropique. Franz Hall spends his days drinking & observing people in the zocalo & occasional nights involved in an ivory-smuggling operation threatened by impending government siege. Yet always persistent are his memories of Marie & what was lost."

In this episodic novel Barry Gifford lays bare his young heart, exploring the hopes and disappointments of a uniquely American childhood and adolescence.

"Do the Blind Dream? "shows Gifford at the height of his powers, navigating with ease the new, more fragmented imaginative landscape of morning-after America. Gifford seems to have anticipated themes that suddenly are recognizable everywhere: the fragility of identity; the power of coincidence; the illusion of a secure tomorrow.
In contrast to his often nightmarish, satirical, groundbreaking novels of the 1990s--Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, and Night People among them--"Do the Blind Dream? "continues in the tender and deeply introspective vein revealed in two recent works: Gifford's memoir "The Phantom Father" (named a "New York Times" Notable Book), and the award-winning novella "Wyoming." From the intimate, stylistically daring examination of the darkest secrets in the history of an Italian family, to the terrible but often beautiful fears and discoveries of childhood, to the sardonic, desperate confusion of adult life, "Do the Blind Dream?" reveals an exceptionally versatile, highly tuned sensibility.

"From the Hardcover edition."

"Do the Blind Dream? "shows Gifford at the height of his powers, navigating with ease the new, more fragmented imaginative landscape of morning-after America. Gifford seems to have anticipated themes that suddenly are recognizable everywhere: the fragility of identity; the power of coincidence; the illusion of a secure tomorrow.
In contrast to his often nightmarish, satirical, groundbreaking novels of the 1990s--Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, and Night People among them--"Do the Blind Dream? "continues in the tender and deeply introspective vein revealed in two recent works: Gifford's memoir "The Phantom Father" (named a "New York Times" Notable Book), and the award-winning novella "Wyoming." From the intimate, stylistically daring examination of the darkest secrets in the history of an Italian family, to the terrible but often beautiful fears and discoveries of childhood, to the sardonic, desperate confusion of adult life, "Do the Blind Dream?" reveals an exceptionally versatile, highly tuned sensibility.

A new and diverse anthology from the author of Wyoming presents an array of novel excerpts, short stories, poetry, memoir, a screenplay excerpt, and an interview, including selections from the Sailor and Lula novels, tales from Night People, childhood stories from The Phantom Father, and more. Origi

Reminiscent of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, "Memories from a Sinking Ship" travels the landscape of a turbulent world seen through a boy's steady gaze. Like Twain's Mississippi River and Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted, Gifford's Chicago, New Orleans, and the highways and byways between offer us mesmerizing lives lost in the kaleidoscope of postwar America, and in particular those of Roy's adrift and disappointed mother and his hoodlum father.

American Falls is the first major collection of short stories from Barry Gifford, master of the dark side of the American reality. These stories range widely in style and period, from the 1950s to the present, from absurdist exercises to romantic tales, from stories about childhood innocence to novellas of murder and revenge.
In the title story, a Japanese-American motel operator chooses not give up a total stranger, a black man wanted for murder, when the police come searching for him. In "Room 584, The Starr Hotel," a man rants his outrage at an amorous couple in the room next door before he himself is arrested for having committed multiple murders. "The Unspoken" recounts the confessions of a man without a mouth who tells about the woman who loved him. And in this collection's longest fiction, a novella called "The Lonely and the Lost," a small town's talented and colorful inhabitants solve their problems as best they can until it comes time for the devil to reap what they have sown.
Dark and light intermix in masterful chiaroscuro, dark becoming light, light revealing sinister or brooding complexity. No simple endings, only happy beginnings.

The Cavalry Charges: Writings on Books, Film, and Music, Revised Edition is a collection of anecdotal reflections that relate many of the experiences that shaped Barry Gifford as a writer. Representative of Gifford's body of work, this volume is divided into three sections: books, film and television, and music. Within these sections, Gifford's best work is showcased, including a nine-part dossier on Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks, in which Gifford examines the public and private lives of those involved in the film, producing an innovative framework for the movie. New to the collection are four previously published essays: a brief look at the novels of Alvaro Mutis; a reflection on Gifford's schooling under Nebraska poet John Neihardt; an essay on Elliot Chaze and his novel, Black Wings Has My Angel; and a short piece on Sailor and Lula.