Ralph Bland – författare

Ralph Bland''s eleventh novel, Lockhart, is the picaresque tale of Thomas Lockhart from his college days in the 1970s to his landing spot thirty years later in his hometown of Rhodes, Tennessee. Escaping from a dark past and a disreputable present, Tom Lockhart returns to Rhodes to confront the ghosts and demons of his past and somehow carve out a place to stand his ground against age, time, and the worst of all his enemies: himself. From a haunted incident to a shattered romance and the promise of a happy ending, Lockhart walks, runs, and shapeshifts himself through the labyrinthian corridors of the magically realistic world in his path.

Corvettes and Thunderbirds are parked next to Studebakers, Beetles, and, in some cases, cars that may defy description of any kind in this collection of twenty-six original essays and stories about first cars, family cars, and even dream cars that traveled the highways and backroads of the authors'' lives. Often hilarious, sometimes bittersweet, the stories are about growing up--although for some of us, where cars and trucks are concerned, we never quite do.

From drinking sweet tea on a beloved grandmother''s porch to playing army to witnessing prejudice and violence or receiving the lash, these stories illustrate growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, what it felt, tasted, and looked like through the eyes of the boys who lived it.