Tod Goldberg Recommends

“Most people have never heard of H. Lee Barnes,” Goldberg says. “It’s a shame, really, because he’s writing some of the most compelling fiction around. His first collection of short fiction, Gunning For Ho, published by the University of Nevada Press a few years ago, was a dense and emotional selection of Vietnam war fiction that presented a voice as fresh and as frightening as any I’ve read in the past. But it is his epic novel The Lucky (also published by the University of Nevada Press) that truly shows Barnes at his best as it weaves the sordid tale of Pete Elkins and Willy Bobbins, through the streets of Las Vegas, the ranches of Montana and the jungles of Southeast Asia. H. Lee Barnes is an American original, a writer’s writer if there ever was one, and one who New York should stop ignoring.”

Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Fake Liar Cheat, which was not a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, but which many black-clad 17 year olds seem to like. His short fiction has been published widely in journals and magazines across the country and his weekly column in the Las Vegas Mercury has twice won the Nevada Press Association Prize for column writing.