Boomerang ; Never Die

Book excerpt: In Boomerang, a novel told in vignettes both real and fictive, a father attempting to cope with the tragic murder of his son learns that actions return to haunt or reward. He becomes the embodiment of Hannah's ideal of forbearance, dignity, and decency in the face of incomprehensible death. In Never Die Hannah mingles hilarity and horror as the frontier West is killed off by the onset of automobiles, biplanes, and nitroglycerine bombs. A gallery of grotesque characters - a judges' evil dwarf henchman, a nymphomaniacal schoolteacher, and a homosexual doctor named Fingo - populate this rollicking postmodern novel in which Old West myths collide with the anarchy of the twentieth century.