Red Stick Men

Tim Parrish's debut collection set in his native Baton Rouge, Louisiana, garnered widespread praise and sold out rapidly in 2000. This paperback edition keeps this hot Southern fiction in circulation.Greg Langley at the Baton Rouge Advocate writes, "Come join Tim Parrish on a tour of a place where the night air is thick with the perfume of heat, humidity, and burning chemicals. It's a place of small, white houses sitting placidly in the heat of midday. It's a sleepless place where the nights are eternally lit by the flickering of flames of flares burning off waste at the big chemical plants. It's Baton Rouge".Chris Navratil writes in The New York Times Book Review, "Baton Rouge -- or 'Red Stick' as it's called by the locals -- asserts a harsh influence over the men whose stories make up Tim Parrish's impressive first collection. The nine stories here are uniformly absorbing and original, and they cover a period from the late 1960s through the Persian Gulf War and the early 1990s. . . . Withsubtle irony and spare prose Parrish evokes the hard-won strength of the people who live in Baton Rouge's industrial underbelly".Publishers Weekly writes, "In Parrish's Baton Rouge, every block seems like the wrong side of the tracks. Racism is as thick as the humidity and every living room harbors domestic violence, incest, or just plain odd behavior. This accomplished collection of nine terse stories showcases Baton Rouge and the people that emerge from its rough houses. . . ".Kirkus Reviews called the book, "A refreshing -- at times inspirational -- debut collection about hardworking people trying to do the right thing. . . . Fine work".