Loveless Oregon Elliot Matson
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- Fiction
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Loveless Oregon is a short story collection about death, rebirth, prosperity and its pitfalls. Each story takes place in the same building in the same town, across many years. The stories feature disparate characters and different situations linked by their geography and omnipresent supernatural forces. From a down-on-his-luck stranded traveling salesman in the 1970s to a duo of precocious Alsea Native children 700 years in the past, the stories are woven with delicate, whimsical attention to detail and acute sense of place. Welcome to Loveless.
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Story #1: Love Me Like That
In 1964, struggling rockabilly musician Keith “Tex” Bartlett finds himself in Loveless, Oregon, performing at a sorry excuse for a music venue. Keith becomes stuck in a loop between maintaining his artistic integrity trying to write his sophomore album and selling out to write a Woodie Guthrie-esque advertisement for the Oregon Coast.
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Story #2: Praying for Bad Days
Two estranged sisters meet in a trendy, present-day Loveless café. Decades-old tensions reignite and secrets come to light as Cass, a blue-collar townie who never left, discusses the condition of their ailing mother with Val, a bougie NYC sophisticate who put Loveless in the rearview a long time ago.
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Story #3: Watcher
Things were going well for Aemon’s whale watching tours business five years ago—but not in 1988. Faced with a never-ending migratory dry spell in the wettest part of the country, the proprietor feels constantly trapped, down on his luck and ready to crack. Until a mysterious phone call instills a new purpose.
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Story #4: Appointments
Martha Gardenia’s consignment dress shop is thriving in mid-90s Loveless. But not for the reasons you might expect. Martha plays appointment Wack-a-Mole throughout her day, juggling an array of regular annoying customers and increasingly shady characters.
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Story #5: Cold Roses
In the early 1950s, Maynard Clay agrees to let a Hollywood film crew shoot some of their noir detective feature in his struggling boutique hotel. As he witnesses the director, producer and crew mercilessly deconstruct the space and life he built with his late husband, Gavin, Maynard confronts feelings of his own identity and memories of Gavin’s mysterious disappearance.
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Story #6: Dermitt's Nuts
1970s traveling salesman Dermitt M. Downs has an inventory problem. In order to get out of Loveless, Oregon, he needs gas in his car, and in order to buy gas he needs to sell his trunkful of Carlotti’s Ceramic Ice Cream Cones. However, the only viable customers are the uninterested elderly owners of the town’s taffy and ice cream shop. Dermitt’s overwhelming positivity, he hopes, is his secret to success.