Prairie Oysters - Paperback

by Don Hurd (Author)

Residents of the small Texas town of Espantosa are used to living off the map. The only industry they had (a goat farm operated by a swashbuckling Aussie) died from a mysterious blight long ago, the opening of an interstate turned the main road through town into a backwoods byway, and the sole source of entertainment is a decrepit theater that's shown the same ragged print of The French Connection for more than a decade. But when residents learn that the mysterious Miss Coakely has come to town to write a guidebook, they realize this might just be their last shot at reversing Espantosa's declining fortunes. It's up to Melchor Mendoza, failed entrepreneur and the "unofficial mayor" of Espantosa, to pull together an assortment of offbeat townspeople in a desperate effort to convince Miss Coakely that the town deserves more than a passing mention in The Book. The unlikely cast of characters includes a curandera who employs black magic to avoid paying her taxes, a septic tank cleaner whose nocturnal prowlings are tolerated because his services are deemed to vital to dispense with, a geriatric anarchist who published the town's last newspaper, and the dangerously flatulent ghost of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Told with great humor and a keen eye for human frailty, Prairie Oysters is the ribald story of a town that didn't have sense enough to lie down and die. Ultimately, it is the story of ordinary people confronting the terrible gulf between reality and the heart's fiction. Their triumph is as unexpected as it is heartbreaking.

Author Biography

Don Hurd grew up in Southwest, a small Texas community that took its name from a prominent filling station. Outside of the local school library, the most common printed materials were seed catalogs and The Farmer's Almanac. Hurd dropped out of school at age twelve, choosing a path of independent study and devouring classics and hipster lit with equal relish. After obtaining his General Education Diploma, he attended San Antonio College and St. Mary's University, graduating with a degree in English Lit. He has been an active participant in the San Antonio literary scene. He served as editor of ViAztlan, the International Journal of Chicano Arts and Letters. He was founder of the NO CONCEPT ART performance poetry series, and co-founder with the poet Ricardo Sanchez of the "Paperbacks Y Mas" reading series. He is the author of A Lesser Grief and River Man, available from Toad Press and Deep Throat Giraffe Publishing. His work has appeared in the Trinity Review, Revista/Review Interamericana, BIGnews, Talebones, and Southwestern American Literature, among others. His short story, "Guadalupe and the Taxman," was selected for inclusion in New Stories from the Southwest, edited by D. Seth Horton. After retiring from teaching English to economically disadvantaged students, he opened an independent bookstore in San Antonio. He is married and has two sons.