A WORKING MAN’S APOCRYPHA

William Luvaas weaves magic and absurdity around characters caught between apocalypse and heartbreak. Deftly spinning unpredictable plots in these fourteen stories, Luvaas conveys the joys and misfortunes of characters tested by trauma or loss, who regularly find unexpected opportunities for survival. Common to all of these tales is a sense of something longed for…just out of reach. Hyperbole is a common refrain, suggesting that inexplicable forces are at work behind human fate.

Nature runs amok in stories like “Season of Limb Fall” and “Yesterday After the Storm,” wherein a tornado whirls away a man’s wife and daughter, Big and Little Lilly, and all hell breaks loose when they return midway into his ensuing love affair. In “Rain,” flood survivors in California’s coastal range build makeshift arks in anticipation of the world’s watery end. After her diabetic handyman’s suicide in the collection’s title story, Louise finds John Sylvio’s haunting, nearly illiterate diary which documents his unrequited love for her, and she is ambushed by love and loss. A son reconciles with his disapproving father who is fading into Alzheimer’s in “To The Death.”

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Praise for A Working Man’s Apocrypha:

“I was moved and utterly convinced by such narratives as William Luvaas’s Carpentry, with its mordant wit and unexpected ending.”
– Joyce Carol Oates, Introduction to American Fiction, Vol. 9

“This collection displays notable strengths, sweet rendering of unexpected and unspoken love; humble work precisely described; compressed, believable dialogue; and humor. An absorbing collection by a writer to keep your eye on.”
– Edith Pearlman, author of Binocular Vision and How To Fall

“William Luvaas shows a sophistication and honesty in his writing that is both rare and engaging. His work tracks beneath the glamour and the grit of his characters’ lives to arrive at fresh destinations of perception.”
– Martin Tucker, Editor of Confrontation

 “Luvaas’s stories inform us of mortal wounds while fascinating us with the instruments of character and fate that inflict them. An excellent read.”
– William Pitt Root, author of Fault Dancing and White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West

“A Master of metaphor, of character and imagination, Luvaas takes the reader on odysseys every bit as compelling as those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or J.M. Coetzee. I was enchanted and moved by these stories, some of which are bound to become classics.”
– Pamela Uschuk, American Book Award winning author of Peaches in the Desert

DISCOVERIES
A Working Man’s Apocrypha – Short Stories
‘In these brilliant stories, many set in that oddly named region of Southern California, the Inland Empire (“Mount San Gorgonio to the north, the San Jacintos due east, fractured, faceted with severe late afternoon light”), laws of nature are often broken. Floods, tornadoes and other disasters inspire varied means of survival; death sparks new relationships. A brother and sister, twins, remember how they drifted apart. An artist recalls the practical wisdom of a man who worked for her: ‘Nayls go in coffee cans’ and ‘Don’t trust brite moonlyt nun thatl mess you up evrah time you don’t wach yoresef. It cud make a dam dum crippuled up dibettuck want to go dansing.’”
– Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“In this short story collection, tornados real and metaphorical rip through the lives of not-so-ordinary people, flinging them into unexpected intimacies and tearing away identities once thought airtight. Luvaas’ poetic prose is powerful as the Santa Ana winds yet delicate enough to limn the silences that speak louder than words, as in the title story, where the bond between a widow and her dying handyman is too profound to risk actual words of love.”
– Jendi Reiter, WINNING WRITERS WEBSITE www.winningwriters.com