Condor Dreams & Other Fictions

Haslam explores the rural areas and small towns of his native region California's Great Central Valley in this collection of twenty-five short stories. The stories are filled with a principally masculine cast that is as culturally diverse as the West gets: a Chinese laborer, a Portugese farmer, a Vietnamese schoolboy, a black cowboy, and an Armenian poet, just to name a few. These pieces range from traditional stories to vignettes to sketches and talks as Haslam seeks literary structures that powerfully project his characters and their experiences. The author s triumph in these stories is that, by making us care about his characters and their habitats, he allows us to care more about ourselves and our land."