cover image Winged Shoes and a Shield: Collected Stories

Winged Shoes and a Shield: Collected Stories

Don Bajema. City Lights, $16.95 trade paper (282p) ISBN 978-0-87286-588-4

Canadian actor and novelist Bajema%E2%80%99s astute and unconventional collection of interconnected stories follows Eddie Burnett, a %E2%80%9Cgoony%E2%80%9D 13-year-old boy eager for a girl%E2%80%99s attention; driving the narrative, his coming-of-age trials take place amid the parched canyons of Southern California. Told in vignettes (published in the books Reach and Boy in the Air in 1996 by Henry Rollins%E2%80%99s imprint, 2.13.61), these lyrical stories treat a range of topics, from schoolboy football stardom and infatuation with a local beauty to Eddie%E2%80%99s encounters with his emotionally battered father, described as a %E2%80%9Cdog of war%E2%80%9D with a %E2%80%9Csoul in pieces.%E2%80%9D Decades flow by, as the author reveals Barnett%E2%80%99s life as a trailer-park boy during the %E2%80%9960s and %E2%80%9970s and later as an unhappily married man. Memorable boyhood shenanigans (some with tragic endings) precede accounts of other characters consumed by their own predicaments. Bajema%E2%80%99s prose combines the precision of pop-song lyrics with the surreal haziness of a fever-dream. A raw and direct pathway into the mind of an independent youth %E2%80%9Ctrapped in the culture of Southern California.%E2%80%9D (Oct. 15)