'/> Uncommon Hours: November 2015
Blogging on culture, politics, and the environment since 2008.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Publication date set for 'A Great Fullness'!

It's official! A Great Fullness will be released by Fomite Press on January 15, 2016. Presales coming soon.  For reviewers and booksellers, click here for the spec sheet from Fomite Press.

http://www.fomitepress.com/Home.html

A Great Fullness
is the story of an orphan who lives with a secret even she doesn’t know she possesses – the truth about her mother’s violent death at her father's hands. Growing up amid the endless turnover of guests at her aunt and uncle’s bed and breakfast inn, Kim Pugh tries to find her place in a world where everyone is a stranger and many have secrets of their own. Set in small-town Kansas as the new millennium ushers in a decade of tragedy and war, A Great Fullness traces the fate of one family whose struggle for survival and redemption echoes the turbulence of a troubled world.


Praise for A Great Fullness


“As in a Greek tragedy, a horrific death occurs off-stage in Bob Sommer’s second novel, A Great Fullness, and colors every moment of this suspenseful story about a surviving child."  
  —Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate, 2007-2009, author of Ghost Stories of the New West

“Bob Sommer writes eloquently about ordinary Midwestern Americans confronted with the extraordinarily disruptive pressures of the twenty-first century.…”
  —William Merrill Decker, author of Kodak Elegy: A Cold War Childhood

“With cinematic clarity and pace, A Great Fullness takes us inside a family caught in turmoil, as the drama of their lives reflects our troubled society and its broken capacity for joy.”
   —David Ray, award-winning poet, author of Sam’s Book

“While rooted in the landscape of eastern Kansas in the late twentieth century, the story opens itself to all of us, tracing with care and insight the struggle to overcome loss and to forge new bonds of love and trust in the face of all the challenges that life presents.”
  —Kimball Smith, author of Missing Persons and Nothing Disappears

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

'Bread Crumbs and Hatchet Marks': a new essay included in O-Dark-Thirty

My new essay, entitled "Bread Crumbs and Hatchet Marks," appears in the current issue of O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal of the Veterans Writing Project--released just as Veterans Day is upon us. This essay explores the subtle ways my late son Francis found to express his pain and guilt following his deployments to Iraq and Afganistan. Click the image to read "Bread Crumbs and Hatchet Marks," as well as the many other fine contributions to this issue.

http://bit.ly/1QgRCIc

To learn more about Francis, please visit www.francisfund.org.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

A Great Fullness -- proof copy in hand!

The proof copy for A Great Fullness arrived today! I have another round of minor corrections to do, and the book will soon be ready for release from Fomite Press.