![The White Field by [Douglas Cole]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51soRjAB7VL.jpg)
THE BOOK: The White Field.
PUBLISHED IN: 2020.
THE AUTHOR: Douglas Cole.
THE EDITOR: Kimberly Coghlan.
THE PUBLISHER: Touchpoint Press.
SUMMARY: The White Field is a fast-paced journey of a man, Tom, fresh out of prison and trying desperately to rebuild his life. But he is caught by mysterious, unseen forces beyond his knowledge or control. After his release from prison, he is dropped back into the world in the wastelands of the city. In the menial work afforded the underclass, he begins his new life among characters at the edges of society, dwellers of the netherworld such as Raphael, a former cop from Mexicali singing Spanish arias in the mists of the industrial night among drug addicts and crooked cops; Tony, a stoner scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge of history based solely on the intricate study of rock and roll; and Larry, the bloated, abusive manager trapped as much as his workers in a world of tedium and repetition and machines. Think, The Three Stooges on acid. Unable to reconnect with what’s left of his family, Tom embarks on a criminal path more harrowing than the one that led him to prison in the first place. Lured in by the nefarious, Thane, he slips into a plan that will leave him with no way back. And with no place left in this world to go but prison, he makes one last run for freedom. Will he escape?
THE BACK STORY: The story came like a lightning bolt to the head. I was driving back and forth from Seattle to Bellingham for graduate school. I felt like I knew every stone on the road by name. I kept thinking of driving off into the hills and never coming back. Why? I had nothing to run from, but I kept thinking it. I felt it. Then, a childhood friend of mine appeared on campus and called me by my old name, that’s how I knew he was real. He lived in a little cabin outside of Mount Vernon, Washington, a place with no water, no electricity. He was running from something. I got an idea, then. A few weeks later, he asked me for a ride to go pick up some things he’d left in his truck on highway 2. He’d been in a crash and the truck wasn’t drivable. When we came up to the truck, I saw that the front was smashed in so bad the steering wheel was up against the driver’s seat. No way he came out of that uninjured. He didn’t even have a scratch.
WHY THIS TITLE?: The white field is the page where it all happens, where it all comes from, the nothing out of which everything springs, like the event horizon which most people in the west misunderstand, so I’m told, a concept of nothing that is ‘pregnant’ with possibilities. The kind of thing that would give you hope if you looked around and saw only shit jobs, lowlife friends and badly running vehicles in your future. The white field hasn’t even been touched, and yet its all there already, all of it, the way fire is already there, the striking of the match just gives it a way to appear.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? It’s an adventure, a crime caper, a peak into another world, a social commentary about the rigidity of social class in America and the failings of the judicial and penal systems, a meditation on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a journey through the Bardo, a dream with a message.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“The White Field is a gritty yet nuanced story of an ex-con’s struggles and choices.” –Jeffery Lee Campbell, author of the popular memoir, Do Stand So Close to Me, My Improbable Adventure as Sting’s Guitarist.
“Lovely combination of a straightforward crime plot and complex characters and emotions that resonate long after the last page.” –Henrietta Goodman, author of Take What You Want, and All That Held Us.
“The White Field’s lyrical language combined with its gritty outlook on life drew me in even though I don’t usually enjoy true noir fiction (which this book is).” –Kathryn Brown Rampsperger
AUTHOR PROFILE:
Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry, a novella called Ghost, and the highly praised, well-reviewed novel The White Field. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Poetry International, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Chiron, Louisiana Literature, Slipstream, as well Spanish translations of work (translated by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia) in La Cabra Montes. He is a regular contributor to Mythaixs, an online journal, where in addition to his fiction and essays, his interviews with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke (Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave Matthews Band) have been popular contributions https://mythaxis.com/?s=douglas+Cole. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is https://douglastcole.com/.
SAMPLE:
“I awoke from a deep sleep that night to the sound of someone screaming. Or was I dreaming? Some commotion. A fight. I got out of bed. I couldn’t hear any specific words, but it was definitely a fight. Right outside my door I heard a thump, a banging, then more screaming. So I opened my door, and right there on the walkway, I saw a big, bald man dragging a woman by her feet—or at least he was trying to. She was holding onto the railing and had a good grip it looked like because he was lifting and pulling at her legs, trying to yank her loose, but she wasn’t letting go. I stayed there in the doorway. Then I said, “Hey! What are you doing?”
They both froze in place. The man’s eyes burned mad-dog fury at me. His face had that sweat-sheen of a high-octane fever mind. The woman gripped the railing, her head down. That was a righteous grip. A life-grip. There was nothing I could imagine that would break her loose. Oh man, I thought, this is someone else’s problem. What am I doing? Why did I open my door? This can only lead to trouble. But I stood there. I just waited to see what would happen…”
WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-white-field-douglas-cole/1137349249?ean=9781663534804
PRICE:
Hardback: 26.99, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-white-field-douglas-cole/1137349249?ean=9781663534804
Paperback, 16.99, https://www.amazon.com/White-Field-Douglas-Cole/dp/1952816076/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=the+white+field&qid=1624985806&sr=8-3
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-white-field-douglas-cole/1137349249?ean=9781952816079
Audiobook 6.95, https://www.amazon.com/The-White-Field/dp/B08S33F67V/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1624985806&sr=8-3
Nook 5.99, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-white-field-douglas-cole/1137349249?ean=2940163798391
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