Keeping tahoe blue and other provocations

by Andrew Tonkovich

buy from what books

 

buy from libromobile

From a re-imagined Southern California childhood to adult confrontations with power both real and allegorical, these personally and politically engaged stories place their protagonists in everyday circumstances gone surreally rich in possibility, humor and potential resistance. The provocations of everyday political and familial life arrive as fact-fables about fathers and sons, citizenship, faith, addiction, and a nearly mythic insistence on imagination, with opportunities to embrace insight, reconciliation or painful truth.
          __________________________

Praise for Keeping Tahoe Blue:

“In these unsteady times I reach out to Andrew Tonkovich’s stories as I would for a handrail. They manage to be funny, cranky, smart, observant, and moral (yes moral!), all at the same time. Most importantly, they come with a ton of compassion for our collective failings and, while “wisdom” does not seem to be a word that has gotten us very far these days, it’s a comfort to find it here, in these most excellent tales.” — Jim Krusoe, author of The Sleep Garden

“Andrew Tonkovich challenges us to examine America-the-familiar—post 9/11 mega-churches, Bed Bath and Beyond wedding registries, the development of a genius California highway system through the center of wilderness (one of its developers claims it actually creates two wildernesses, therefore doubling it). But it’s through his deftly warped, brutally poignant, and very funny lens that America becomes less familiar. The banal ‘stuff’ of our everydays—governing systems, relationships to neighbors, the slogans and products and souvenirs—are transformed in the worlds he renders. This is the book you’ve been waiting for.” — Ryan Ridge, author of New Bad News

"Keeping Tahoe Blue reads as though [Tonkovich] gained fresh perspective from the revelation of his surroundings, as if suburban life’s blinders were removed and replaced with clarity and a sudden urge to leave the cell at home and take a walk."
— Daniel Rivera, UC Irvine (full review and profile here)

---