Great Dream of Heaven

In eighteen stories unlike any in our contemporary literature, Sam Shepard explores the vast and rugged American West with the same parched intensity that has made him "the great playwright of his generation" (The New York Times). A boy watches a "remedy man" tame a wild stallion, a contest that mirrors his own struggle with his father. A woman driving her mother's ashes across the country has a strangely transcendent run-in with an injured hawk. Two aging widowers, in Stetsons and bolo ties, together make a daily pilgrimage to the local Denny's, only to be divided by the attentions of their favorite waitress. Peering unblinkingly into the chasms that separate fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and strangers, these powerful tales bear the unmistakable signature of an American master. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Sam Shepard is the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of more than forty-five plays. He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for <b>Great Dream of Heaven</b><i> </i>and has also written the story collection <b>Cruising Paradise</b><i>, </i>two collections of prose pieces, <b>Motel Chronicles</b><i> </i>and <b>Hawk Moon</b><i>, </i>and <b>Rolling Thunder Logbook</b><i>, </i>a diary of Bob Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Review tour. As an actor he has appeared in more than thirty films, and he received an Oscar nomination in 1984 for his performance in <i>The Right Stuff.</i> His screenplay for <i>Paris, Texas</i> won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, and he wrote and directed the film <i>Far North </i>in 1988. Shepard’s plays, eleven of which have won Obie Awards, include <i>Buried Child, The Late Henry Moss,</i> <i>Simpatico,</i> <i>Curse of the Starving Class, True West, Fool for Love,</i> and <i>A Lie of the Mind, </i>which won a New York Drama Desk Award. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Shepard received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy in 1992, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. He lives in Minnesota.