This is the story of a ten-year-old in top hat, cane & a red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's ' Get Happy' by an alarmed mother at the bedroom door exclaiming, in shame & exasperation: ' Son, you're a boy.'A self-confessed 'chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses & a Southern accent', Mark Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America
- from Memphis to Tucson to Titusville, Florida & Northern California. With his rebellious sister already heading for abortions, carnie jobs, credit-card fraud & prison, & his fragile, artistic mother slowly drinking herself to death, Mark has quite enough troubles without discovering that his dawning sexuality is The Wrong One. Attracted not to baseball gloves or space travel but to textiles & opera, theatre & free-form dance, his confusion & fear are shared by those around him, as he makes his way into the world to the sound of Petula Clark singing ' Downtown'. After experiments with drugs, psychedelia & heterosexuality he reaches the age of majority & finally acknowledges & accepts the ten-year-old Judy Garland in himself: that he is a gay man, emerging, radiant & new, from his own ashes. It is a triumphant transformation
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Former SAS Captain Will Jackson is a man with nothing to lose. A veteran of the most dangerous missions the Regiment could throw at him, his life was torn apart the day a terrorist attack killed his family. Now he leads a life of grief-stricken obscurity, the world of warfare nothing but a distant memory.

People higher up the chain of command have other plans, however. They

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Former SAS Captain Will Jackson is a man with nothing to lose. A veteran of the most dangerous missions the Regiment could throw at him, his life was torn apart the day a terrorist attack killed his family. Now he leads a life of grief-stricken obscurity, the world of warfare nothing but a distant memory.

People higher up the chain of command have other plans, however. They

...

Former SAS Captain Will Jackson is a man with nothing to lose. A veteran of the most dangerous missions the Regiment could throw at him, his life was torn apart the day a terrorist attack killed his family. Now he leads a life of grief-stricken obscurity, the world of warfare nothing but a distant memory.

People higher up the chain of command have other plans, however. They

...

Former SAS Captain Will Jackson is a man with nothing to lose. A veteran of the most dangerous missions the Regiment could throw at him, his life was torn apart the day a terrorist attack killed his family. Now he leads a life of grief-stricken obscurity, the world of warfare nothing but a distant memory.

People higher up the chain of command have other plans, however. They

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Kate & John Ryan have four children, of whom the eldest are Michael & Dara. Their small town is peaceful & friendly, an unchanging background for a golden childhood. In long, hot summers Michael & Dara & their friends fish & swim or play in the ivy-clad ruins of Fernscourt, the great house burned down during the Troubles...
No one in Mountfern has the slightest inkling of what it will mean when the ruins are bought by Patrick O' Neill, an Irish American with a dream in his heart & a great deal of money in his pocket. It is not until the very end of this drama, with its interlocking stories of love lost & won, ambitions nurtured & secrets betrayed, that Patrick O' Neill will understand the irony & the significance of his great dream for Mountfern.
...

Kate & John Ryan have four children, of whom the eldest are Michael & Dara. Their small town is peaceful & friendly, an unchanging background for a golden childhood. In long, hot summers Michael & Dara & their friends fish & swim or play in the ivy-clad ruins of Fernscourt, the great house burned down during the Troubles...
No one in Mountfern has the slightest inkling of what it will mean when the ruins are bought by Patrick O' Neill, an Irish American with a dream in his heart & a great deal of money in his pocket. It is not until the very end of this drama, with its interlocking stories of love lost & won, ambitions nurtured & secrets betrayed, that Patrick O' Neill will understand the irony & the significance of his great dream for Mountfern.
...

Fires is the best introduction to the full range & humanity of Carver's writing. It contains four essays, including a moving ...