Kim Dallesandro Novels

 Welcome to Pocahontas County, West Virginia!   All that matters is the energy you bring to the table… your demeanor, your ability to not care and not take anything personally… and fill up your glass however you can. Seems like everybody that ends up at Cheat Mountain has an empty glass to fill doesn’t it? Sometimes you have to empty someone else’s glass to fill your own, doncha? This is a story about cold spring water and corn from the pen of Kim Dallesandro. 

 In twenty-four hours everything will be settled, the ten thousand dollars spent, the kilo of Mexican Brown heroin bought, the arrests and conviction of all the players in the dirty underworld of Bastrop, Texas, 1977. After a year of excuses, the parade of people march on, everybody is somebody else, wishing they were who they used to be, caught up in the game “Deal the cards, let’s play.”, they all have a role, they all wear a mask, even the ‘good guys’ : the undercover cops and undercover agents -- and let’s not forget the undercover reporters. 

 It's been three hours since it happened. Three hours since I called. Three hours.  When I was a child, I lived in a world I created in my mind, a universe that answered all the questions, softened all the blows, soothed and protected me from the instability of my life. I hide here, there, in it, often. It would be impossible to exist without it, age certainly did not diminish the fears I’ve felt since birth. Me, I’m an old woman now, so much of my life was stolen, given away, traded for things I may not think are important tomorrow - we fight for what we think we deserve, for what we believe we are entitled to, what we believe we need to carry on. “It’s foolish, I know.” I’m thinking this sitting here in the barn the dust obscuring my view of the trees bending in the wind.  

 “When the paintball game was over, there were only four of us. One, two, three, four. You, me, Jimmy and Johnny. Right?”  Ten years after the disappearance of young Ryan, the past continues to cast a dark shadow over the lives of Cappy, Alice and Steve. The tragedy is the glue that binds them together; the suspicions, secrets, lies and deceit the rope that ties them to each other to suffer their guilt, their grief, their co-dependency and misery. Ten years later they still holler: “Olly olly oxen free.” waiting for an echo of truth, waiting to be forgiven, waiting for a measure of peace.  

 “There are ways to kill a person without ever touching them, without ever being around them. Did you know that?”   Martin and Julia have a strange and complicated relationship that is coming to an end. As they enter the final stages of the convoluted dance of litigation, we see the various layers of the enigma that is their marriage peeled away like decaying wallpaper, showing the buried mechanisms of grief and trauma underneath. An atmosphere of mistrust and menace permeates the proceedings and the threat of actual violence seems never far away. 

 “The 8mm film threaded its way through the projector, the clicking, purring sound as it advanced, crackling as the plastic perforated strip met metal. The screen black flickers white : black : fading into focus, focus now on three boys wrapped in heavy down filled coats, scarves, hand knitted hats pulled low, it was snowing it was cold, they spilled from the doorway into the snow kicking it, making snowballs, yelling, laughing, throwing and hitting each other, and like a gang of spirited ponies they galloped away towards the frozen lake.”   A childhood tragedy bleeds through the lives of two brothers who end up  waiting out the weather in a snowbound cabin in Iowa. With them an angel from Los Angeles, a depressed, divorced doctor, and two bottle blondes. Lies and truths, confessions and forgiveness fueled by dancing, drink and drugs - searching for the answer: what is and what is not? 

 The latest novel by Kim Dallesandro. "The pain began the moment my foot dipped into the water, grandmother easing me over the edge of the tub, she pressed me into sitting, the pain radiating pain in every nerve, every cell, a rush of hot, heat, sizzling pain. I laid my head on the back of the tub, my eyes closed. I listened to my heart beating in my ears as I slid down into the water, it covered my face as I surrendered to it. I felt a moment of peace." A complex tale of love, deceit and redemption that links three generations of women in a voyage of discovery about their own natures and the complex webs we weave that enslave us. As usual with Kim Dallesandro' s  writing, the story twists and turns like an assassin's knife, as secret after secret is revealed and the true nature of loyalty is discovered. 

 On the Boulevard' is a collection of snapshots of Hollywood taken in the early hours of the morning by Kim Dallesandro "That hour that separates darkness from dawn -   that is when I walk the boulevard. The streetlights flicker off, a bird ballet in the sky - that is when I walk the boulevard. Streets empty but for the silence, that cry of the lonely - that is when I walk the boulevard. When the lost and weary rest on sidewalks, in doorways - that is when I walk the boulevard. That hour that sprinkles gold on all of us, we sparkle and shine like we did long ago, the sun’s coming up - that is when I walk the boulevard." 

 Four characters become embroiled in a scheme to appropriate a life-changing amount of money. ‘Reno’ shows the complex double-dealing and psychological manipulations they engage in as they inch towards their goal.    “You gotta take chances, Emily, life rolls along and if you don’t run faster than the rest of them, think smarter, push yourself further than you thought possible, you’ll be left behind. Dare to live, dare to fail. Dare to love, dare to lose. Dare to jump, dare to fall. It’s life, Emily, squeeze every drop you can out of it, this is not a dress rehearsal, it’s the only time you have.” 

 Oklahoma is slow and pastoral where its predecessor 'Dead End cul de sac' was frenetic, yet it packs maybe even more of a punch due to its slow burn. The reader feels invested in all the characters, every one of whom is flawed but every one of whom is human and sympathetic. From the first chapter we realise we have walked in on the last chapter of a tragedy in the classical sense, where each character's personal history meshes with the others' in a way that seems predestined to lead inexorably to disaster. And yet, is it inevitable? The reader will be hanging on to the end to find out. 

 "With her usual economy and precision, Kim Dallesandro weaves another deceptive magical spell that tells us a lot while telling us apparently little. Behind the facade of a 'comedy of errors', there are layers behind layers of deception, disappointment and earned redemption. In this engaging little fable, we see characters that are both believably real and symbolically true. This is modem America in a petri dish, without recourse to postmodern satire or the heavy handed pop psychology so popular of late. Kim Dallesandro is a very moral writer, who doesn't moralise. Her characters walk a line between idealism and innocence and the cold brutal world of 'Realpolitik'.lt' s one to read more than once, each time realising that this simple little volume is actually slyly complex." D M Mitchell (author of'Savoy: A Serious Life') 

 “Life is a lonely game we try to play with others.” In these short stories, prose poems and fragments, Kim Dallesandro paints vignettes of loneliness and yearning, desire and despair. Her characters are ordinary people under pressure from the world, seeking happiness yet only too often finding it slipping away through their fingers like faery gold.  “One of the things that I find astonishing about Kim Dallesandro’s writing is its razor sharp economy.  Her short stories have the biblical weight of the classic blues songs put out by Sun Records back in the 50s; little pocket psychodramas that capture not only whole lives but a whole era in microcosm. Comparisons are odious but inevitable, so if I throw a few names onto the table here – Cormac McCarthy, Robert Carver, Shirley Jackson – Kim Dallesandro doesn’t suffer by the comparison.” D M Mitchell (author of Savoy: A Serious Life) 

 The new novel from Kim Dallesandro. On July 15th, 1976, twenty six children and a bus driver from Chowchilla California were kidnapped and buried alive in a rock quarry 106 miles away in Livermore. This is not a story about that. This is a story about the people who lived through that. This is a story about fear, mindful meditation, loss and most importantly, a story about what is a lie and what is the truth; a story about living and a story about dying. A story about letting go and surrender.  “In Dream Maker, Kim Dallesandro, delivers with prowess a work of fiction that had me on the edge of my seat wanting more. I couldn’t tell you what the story was even about but the dialogue between the characters set scenes that were intriguing. Kim shows expertise at reeling the reader in and not letting you go until she’s had her way with you and you love every delicious minute of it! Dream Maker is a work of captivating art!”  (Lisa Cherry, author of ‘The Hard Way’)  

 Kathleen is dying of cancer. As she reviews her life and reflects on mortality she decides she needs to perform an act that will confirm her humanity. Jesse is a Vietnam veteran, horrifically damaged psychologically and physically. As their lives become entwined, an inexorable series of events is set into motion.  Mad Dog Tag is a character-driven psychological study, part love story, part horror, with the fascinating beauty of a slow motion trainwreck.  This is the second novel by Kim Dallesandro.   “It is not an easy task for a writer to maintain a level of adrenalin throughout an entire work of literature that keeps a reader on the edge of the proverbial seat, and yet, while Mad Dog Tag comes from a very different viewpoint than her first work, Trains, KD manages to sustain the  same sense of anticipation and anxiety one feels while immersed in Trains. The reader just does not know what to expect, what will come next.”  (Charlotte Herzele MEd, PhD, MED) 

 When fourteen year old Kari left her abusive home and connected with a band of disaffected young people in Germany, she never anticipated the ordeal she would live through for the following several years. It was 1968; the Vietnam War was raging and an alienated generation was kicking back, culturally and politically.  The group Kari joined was a part of a network of radical activists connected with the infamous Red Army Faction. Soon she was both using and running drugs, getting embroiled in political activism bordering on terrorism, and trying to survive the sexual, emotional and physical abuse directed at her by her ‘handler’ and his associates.  An insight into an era born of idealism that shows how it crashed and burned, often becoming worse than the society it had rejected.