{"title":"Jim Ray Daniels","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"eight-mile-high-book-jim-ray-daniels-9781611861426","title":"Eight Mile High","description":"In these linked stories, the constants are the placesfrom Eight Mile High, the local high school, to Eight Miles High, the local bar; from The Clock, a restaurant that never closes, to Stan s, a store that sells misfit clothes. Daniels s characters wander Detroit, a world of concrete, where even a small strip of greenery becomes a hideout for mystery and mayhem. Even when they leave townto Scout camp, or Washington, DC, or the mythical Up North, they take with them their hardscrabble working-class sensibilities and their determination to do what they must do to get by. With a survival instinct that includes a healthy dose of humor, Daniels s characters navigate work and love, change and loss, the best they can. These characters don t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves, even when they stumble. They dust themselves off and head back into the ring with another rope-a-dope wisecrack. These stories seem to suggest that we are always coming of age, becoming, trying to figure out what it means to be an adult in this world, attempting to figure out a way to forgive ourselves for not measuring up to our own expectations of what it means to lead a successful, happy life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49631970787601,"sku":"GOR012846542","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50139203567889,"sku":"CIN161186142XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50159464349969,"sku":"CIN161186142XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/161186142X.jpg?v=1750720387"},{"product_id":"perp-walk-book-jim-ray-daniels-9781611863161","title":"The Perp Walk","description":"In The Perp Walk, his latest collection of linked stories, Daniels maps out the emotional capitals and potholes of coming of age in a blue-collar town in the Great Lakes State, though it could be any state where people work hard, play hard, and aren’t paid nearly enough for their efforts.  Alternating flash fiction pieces with longer narratives, Daniels captures both the shooting stars and the constellations that build into earned insights and honest reflections. Sometimes we need both the long version of the short version and the short version of the long version, he suggests.  Daniels invites his readers to settle on some truth in between the versions. Humor and heartbreak. Coming to terms, coming of age, or just plain aging. U-Haul trucks full of bad behavior and messy goodbyes. In Daniels’s work, the check is always in the mail but somehow never arrives, and honour is more than a certificate - it’s something we strive for, even while doing our various perp walks through life. Compromises are made, as they must be. Sometimes we get what we want for just a second or two, but for these characters, that has to be enough happiness to live on.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50139205730577,"sku":"CIN1611863163VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1611863163.jpg?v=1750763393"},{"product_id":"luck-of-the-fall-book-jim-ray-daniels-9781611864670","title":"The Luck of the Fall","description":"In The Luck of the Fall, characters get lost; they fall, but the falls shape their lives in ways that might even be called “lucky”—if luck is defined as survival, despite the scars left behind. They take consolation in their lack of prizes, in the clarity of their failures, while approaching the future with gallows humor and faith in cynicism. Some stories read like dramatic monologues in the longer play of lives along Eight Mile Road on the edge of Detroit, a landmark location throughout Daniels’s six other fiction collections. Among the looming hulks of abandoned factories, near-nihilistic lives struggle in the absence of the comforting shadows those factories provided. Some keep score, some don’t, as they search for validation, however brief, before the curtain comes down and anonymity returns. COVID shows up with its masked consequences, along with addiction, divorce, unwanted pregnancy, and mental illness. None of these characters fit in, but all are trying to keep from being squeezed out entirely. In The Luck of the Fall, the logic of the heart wins out, even as the characters are picking up the pieces of their broken lives, looking for something shiny called hope.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53193553740049,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53193553772817,"sku":"NIN9781611864670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781611864670.jpg?v=1772794610"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-jim-ray-daniels.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}