The Novels of Jerome Arthur

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#660066" ALINK="#FFCC00" VLINK="#330066">  <IMG SRC="../dots/dot_white.gif" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0" BORDER="0" VSPACE="10" ALT=""> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="400" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0"> <TR> <TD> <DIV ALIGN="center"><H2><FONT FACE="palatino, times new roman">The Novels of Jerome Arthur</FONT></H2></DIV> <P><FONT FACE="palatino, times new roman" SIZE=3> If you are viewing this page it means that your browser does not support FRAMES. The links below are provided for search engine robots only.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman">There are ten titles listed on this website. Four novels are published here in full: <I>Antoine Farot and Swede</I>, <I>Down the Foggy Ruins of Time</I> and <I>Life Could be a Dream, Sweetheart</I> and <I>The Journeyman and the Apprentice</I>. First chapters for three other titles are on the site. They are: <I>Barber Shop Quartet</I>, <I>The Death of Soc Smith</I> and <I>Oh, Hard Tuesday</I>. First chapters for the remaining three titles will be available soon. The next title to be available in full will be <I>The Muttering Retreats</I>, followed by <I>Tales of the Iorn Chair</I> and <I>Got no Secrets to Conceal</I>.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman">In <I>Antoine Farot and Swede</I>, when Antoine Farot takes a Louisville Slugger to Wiktor Sadlo, his abusive step-father, he has no idea what adventures await him when he and his best buddy, Swede, hop a boxcar in Minneapolis, Minnesota and head south. It's Thanksgiving Day, and their plan is to escape the cold of the approaching northern winter. They meet one James Morrison, a man in his thirties with a past, and he takes them under his wing. The fifteen-year-old Antoine loses his virginity to a seventeen-year-old farm girl in southern Illinois. The three travelers get a taste of the blues on Beale Street, and Dixieland jazz on Bourbon Street. They see a bank robbery in Del Rio, Texas and the filming of an "Our Gang" movie on the set in Hollywood.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>Down the Foggy Ruins of Time</I> is the story of Antoine Farot's son Jerôme who is confused about his cultural identity throughout his young life. When he's two years old, he meets George Nieto, and from that point on, he thinks he's a Mexican. Jerôme tells his own story: how he survived the Dominican nuns in grammar school, served on the altar in a white cassock and surplice, and played sandlot baseball. At age fifteen he goes to an inner-city Catholic high school whose enrollment is about eighty percent American-Mexican. Jerôme is riding high by the end of the story. Five of his best friends are Chicanos. He meets Lana Guerrero at a sock hop and now he thinks he's finally arrived.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>Life Could be a Dream, Sweetheart</I> is the third book in the Farot series. The time frame is the first golden age of rock 'n' roll. The story picks up one month after the last scene of <I>Down the Foggy Ruins of Time</I>. In this one Jerôme cruises the streets of Los Angeles with his five best friends, whom he calls "Farot's Five." Rock 'n' roll is a big part of their lives. At the beginning of the story, he meets and courts Rosie Rios, and by the end he is madly in love with Maggie Martínez. The last scene of the novel takes place on "the day the music died."</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>The Journeyman and the Apprentice</I> is the story of Carlos Rangel and young Jack Niel. Carlos owns and operates the two chair barber shop that Jack eventually goes to work in. Jack is smitten by Carlos' nineteen-year-old daughter, Carmela, and as the relationship blossoms, the young lovers are discouraged at every turn by Carlos' wife, Teresa.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>The Muttering Retreats</I> tells the tale of a fourteen-year academic odyssey. Holdorff, the lead character in the story, spends that many years in two colleges and three graduate schools. He is a poet, a barroom philosopher and a well-traveled journeyman school teacher.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>Barbara Shop Quartet</I> depicts one day in a two chair barber shop. Jerôm Farot and his boss, Bernie Honig, take the reader through a busy Good Friday of cutting hair and sharing their own stories and those of the clientele.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>Tales of the iron Chair</I> takes place on one day in the life of Jerôme Farot when he's thirty-three years old. He owns his own barber shop in El Granada, California, and he once again takes the reader through a day of cutting hair.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>The Death of Soc Smith</I> is about Socrates Smith, a man in his fifties, who wakes up one morning to find his name on the obituary page of the local newspaper. The story gets more complicated when his wife receives a death certificate from the county in the mail. The next five days turn into a Kafka nightmare for Soc Smith.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>Oh, Hard Tuesday</I> is the story of a group of friends who are caught up in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. All but one of the roads leading into town are closed because of the quake. The only way supplies and emergency personnel can get into town is by helicopter, and they land on the high school football field. One of the friends is a slightly shell-shocked Vietnam veteran who lives near the high school, and when the choppers land and take off, he is transported back to his combat days.</FONT></P> <P><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"><I>Got no Secrets to Conceal</I> is a love story.</FONT></P> <CENTER> <P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="palatino, times new roman"> <A HREF="../../index.html">Home Page</A> <BR> <A HREF="author.html">Author Page</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/antoine_farot.html">Antoine Farot and Swede</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/foggy_ruins.html">Down the Foggy Ruins of Time</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/sweetheart.html">Life Could be a Dream, Sweetheart</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/journeyman.html">The Journeyman and the Apprentice</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/retreats.html">The Muttering Retreats</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/quartet.html">BarbaraShop Quartet</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/iorn_chair.html">Tales of the Iron Chair</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/soc_smith.html">The Death of Soc Smith</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/hard_tuesday.html">Oh, Hard Tuesday</A> <BR> <A HREF="../chapters/no_secrets.html">Got no Secrets to Conceal</A> <BR> </FONT></P> </CENTER> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> </BODY>