Mina's Bookshelf: THE SENSE OF TOUCH by Ron Parson: Guest Post

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About “The Sense of Touch” Author Ron Parsons

1. The first short story that he ever published was a humorous fictional account of appearing on the game show “The Price is Right,” and being antagonized by host Bob Barker, that appeared in The Onion.

2. The first short story that he every published in a literary review was “Hezekiah Number Three,” which appeared in the Spring 2008 edition of The Gettysburg Review.

3. While attending college at the University of Minnesota, he took a fiction writing class from Alexs Pate, the award-winning author of such books as Losing Absalom and the novelization of Amistad.

4. He doesn’t like ketchup, mustard, or mayonnaise, but does like barbecue sauce.

5. He is an appellate lawyer and once had a First Amendment case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where he was privileged to sit at counsel’s table with Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who argued the case.

6. He was named the Sioux Falls Area Humane Society’s “Friend of the Year” for 2005.

7. His name might well have been “Donald Parsons, Jr.,” instead of “Ronald.” His father had a twin brother who died at birth. His father was originally named Donald, and the twin Ronald, but his father’s older brothers told their parents that “Donald is a duck” and so they changed the surviving twin’s name to Ronald.

8. It is claimed in a family tree kept with an old family Bible that one of his ancestors was an actual “Sheriff of Nottingham” in England.

9. A few single-panel cartoons that he drew were syndicated and appeared in newspapers across the country, including one that was published in the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times.

10. He likes to follow the regular procedures.

THE SENSE OF TOUCH

RON PARSON

Aqueous Books, April 30th 2013

Paperback, ebook; 252 pages

Short Story, Literary Fiction

Purchase at AMAZON

Old friends uncomfortably reunited and lovers who cling to their distance from one another; disappearing fathers, fiercely loving grandfathers, and strangers who pass through and radically change lives...These are among the characters who populate the rugged Midwestern landscapes of the mesmerizing fiction world of Ron Parsons. In his debut collection, THE SENSE OF TOUCH (Aqueous Books; May 1, 2013), Parsons captures people of various ages in the act of searching for meaning and connection and themselves. Firmly set in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan, the lush but often brutally cold heartland of America, the eight stories explore universal themes--loneliness, betrayal, transformation, hope--in fresh, sometimes fanciful, sometimes comical, sometimes jarring, and always moving and memorable ways.

In THE SENSE OF TOUCH, readers will meet:

* Naseem Sayem, the brilliant, troubled, and mystifying young man at the center of "Hezekiah Number Three." A native of Bangladesh abruptly transplanted to the stark white suburbs of Rapid City at age nine, Naseem never fit in and eventually moved on to study physics at MIT--where, shortly before graduation and after shocking news of his father's infidelity and abandonment, he apparently unraveled and vanished. Three months later, he reappeared out of the blue on his stepmom's doorstep, holding a three-legged cat. Naseem's long search for belonging reaches its apex in a hot air balloon floating over the Crazy Horse Monument.

* Waylon Baker, wheat farmer from birth, and Evie Lund, his wife of twenty-four years and counting, even though she had chosen to live far away--in the alien world of the Twin Cities--for eight years. The odd couple at the heart of "Beginning with Minneapolis," Waylon and Evie can't bear to live together or to divorce because they still love each other with a passion, reignited when they find themselves deep in the dirt, in a hole Waylon dug in his wheat field to serve as Evie's grave.

* The nameless narrator of "The Sense of Touch," a serious, young freshman at the University of Minnesota, fleeing yet still attached to his youth in Texas, haunted both by its predatory demons and its romantic dreams. His liberation comes through an alluring muse: his fiction-writing teacher. A ravishing, wild-haired, Memphis-born African-American graduate student, Vonda speaks directly to him when she makes her dramatic pronouncements. Like, "Our masks are not worn, people. They're grown, day by day." And "Never trust anything, not until you can touch it. With touch, you know you know."

The old friends in "The Black Hills," long separated by distance and tragedy, who unexpectedly compete for the affections of a lovely, vulnerable, and married Lakota woman...the young woman who, in the midst of a Halloween blizzard, stumbles into saving an elderly piano teacher's life and faces hard facts about her own snow-bound relationships and emotions in "As Her Heart Is Navigated"...the exceptional grandfather in "Big Blue" and the playboy reformed by someone else's grandson in "Moonlight Bowling"...and the professor of dead languages facing the mysteries of mortality in "Be Not Afraid of the Universe"... Through Ron Parsons, they all come to life, vividly and with emotional resonance, and work their way into the minds and hearts of readers.

About the Author

RON PARSONS is a writer living in Sioux Falls. Born in Michigan and raised in South Dakota, he was inspired to begin writing fiction in Minneapolis while attending the University of Minnesota. His short stories have appeared in many literary magazines and venues, including The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, Storyville App, The Briar Cliff Review, Flyway, and The Onion. His debut collection of stories, THE SENSE OF TOUCH, was released by Aqueous Books in 2013.

You can visit his website at http://ronparsonswriter.com/ or http://www.aqueousbooks.com/author_pages/24_parsons.htm.