Former Bainbridge resident releases new book, '1979 short story collection'
The Highland County Press
"He who has no veneration for his predecessors should expect none when his day is done."
– Dr. John Harris Dental Museum Plaque, Bainbridge, Ohio
A former Bainbridge resident is the author of a new book, “1979 short story collection,” a fictional account about coming of age in the heartland.
Steve Anderson’s “1979 short story collection” has received positive reviews from author and former university journalism instructor Ken Korczak.
Korczak writes at http://toptenbookreview.com/?p=771: “There is something real here that strikes a chord. I’m not sure what it is, but I can feel it. I can’t decide if Steve Anderson is one of those natural writers who is able to make stories like these just flow off his fingertips, or if he is one of those dogged writers, rewriters and revisers – but who cares? He writes extremely well.”
Korczak adds: “There exists in America a special place where you’ll find a transition zone between two distinct cultures. It’s a mixture of the staid, straightforward practicality of Midwesterners with the wild, mysterious blend of the Deep South as shaped by the edge of the Appalachian wilderness. That location is southeast Ohio.”
Anderson told The Highland County Press that his roots are “connected to a little town up Route 50 called Bainbridge.”
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Anderson’s father, Dave Anderson, was the longtime proprietor of Dave’s Barbershop on East Main Street in Bainbridge. The shop is now named Mark’s Barbershop and owned by Anderson’s brother.
The barbershop “just might be the ‘center of the universe,’” Anderson said.
Anderson, who now lives in Columbus, said his new book has had good reviews and has a direct reference to southeast Ohio.
An Amazon.com review reads: “Steve Anderson captures what it meant to come of age in the late 1970s in working-class America. From a family’s West Virginia oil wells to trekking through abandoned small-town factories, to a Nevada campground vacation, adolescents find love, strengthen friendships and create adventures. Each story is tinged with the stark challenges and raw beauty of growing up in a rural, post-Vietnam world of shuttered mills and sprawling train tracks.
“Freedom comes from trying to purchase beer underage, stealing a friend’s dad’s rusted ‘work’ car for a joyride, and using a corrugated tin sheet for racing down a sheer quarry slope. There are stories of first love, captured against desert backdrops and in motel arcades. Most of all, this collection is about finding one’s way to adulthood in a richly revealed time and place in America’s Midwest.”
“1979 short story collection” is available at http://www.amazon.com/1979-short-collection-Steve-Anderson-ebook/dp/B00W4F45BO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1429714982&sr=1-1&keywords=1979+steve+anderson or at Anderson’s website http://www.1979thebook.com.
Copies also are on sale at Mark’s Barbershop in Bainbridge.