Mortal Things. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Mortal Things

What mortal things are fleeting, and what stay with us forever?

Mount Airy, Philadelphia, 1989. Sarah Goins, a college professor with a thriving career and close-knit academic community, is eager to draw her boyfriend Mike Flannagan deeper into her world. But Mike, a groundskeeper at a local seminary, resists, instead keeping her at arm's length as he struggles to come to terms with a past haunted by loss.

Late one night, Mike crosses paths with Domenic Gallo, a neighborhood barber who has been injured in a mugging. As Mike helps the elderly man, Domenic tends to his own painful history, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship built around mutual understanding of each other's grief.

When outside forces drive Sarah and Mike further apart, Sarah seeks out Domenic in an attempt to salvage her floundering relationship. Like Mike, she is drawn into the world of Domenic's barbershop and the new sense of community it offers.

A series of crises and secrets threatens the fragile balance Sarah, Mike, and Domenic have created, and soon the trio find themselves grappling with the meaning of family and class, loyalty and faith. Told in alternating perspectives against the vibrant backdrop of one of Philadelphia's most distinctive neighborhoods, Mortal Things is a powerful reflection on the transient ties that can bind or break us.

 

Ned Bachus's collection of short stories, City of Brotherly Love, was awarded the 2013 Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) Gold Medal for Literary Fiction. About the book, Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife, said "[My] life is variously enriched by reading Ned Bachus's superb stories." The recipient of two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, his 2017 book, Open Admissions: What Teaching at Community College Taught Me About Learning, was the product of his nearly four-decade career at Community 

Born in Quebec and raised in Philadelphia, Ned Bachus taught at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf for two years before attending graduate school at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University), where he founded the first rugby club for the Deaf in the United States. A founding member of Blackthorn Rugby Football Club, Bachus has been inducted into the Blackthorn RFC Hall of Fame. During his four-decade career at Community College of Philadelphia, he won multiple teaching awards, including the Christian and Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. His fiction has been anthologized, published in literary magazines, and presented at the Writing Aloud Series at Philadelphia's InterAct Theatre, and has earned him fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and a residency at Ireland's Cill Rialaig Project, where he began writing Open Admissions. His Fleur-de-Lis Press book of short stories, City of Brotherly Love, received a 2013 IPPY Gold Medal for Literary Fiction. A singer-songwriter, his songs have been recorded by numerous artists and performed on National Public Radio programs including A Prairie Home Companion. He sings and plays percussion as a member of the Louisiana-style roots rock band Sacred CowBoys. He was named honorary member of Alpha Sigma Pi, a Deaf fraternity, and of Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society.