THE WOUNDED: A Novel
Date
2014-01-03
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MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa
Abstract
THE WOUNDED is a novel set pre- and post-WWII in the fictional town of Blacksoot, Colorado. Barstow Little, the protagonist, is psychologically damaged after witnessing the assault of his uncle, Nathan, and later Nathan’s death at the hands of Barstow’s uncle Joseph as well as Barstow’s father, Jonas. Before the war Barstow must navigate not only the physical world of Blacksoot and life on his family’s farm but the confusion in his reality created by the trauma he experiences growing up a Little. As Barstow matures, he is unable to cope with all that he has witnessed in a constructive manner, and while he does attempt to follow the understood laws, norms, and mores of civilized society, circumstances dictate he stray from those norms as a way of ensuring his survival. Establishing himself as a man in the shadow of his father and uncles, Barstow’s only true ally is his mother, and in his development Barstow discovers that he is rarely better than the men he has come to loathe, and in some ways more wounded than them all.
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Keywords
WWII, World War, 1939-1945, Colorado, Trauma