The Petorik Thesis and Tales of the Global West
From an Embassy in Europe to an Industrial Park in Suburban Los Angeles, The Petorik Thesis and Tales of The Global West resembles a ledger where the checks and balances agree to disagree. In this, his second short story collection, W. Jack Savage chronicles a beautiful woman’s quirky obsessions that leave a trail of regretful lovers, a writers disappointment at never being as important as what he writes and a unseen witness to a murder comes forward to do the right thing. But the witness and the right thing are subjective, as even Einstein observed, 'there is no darkness, only the absence of light.' By that reasoning a storyteller knows to never underestimate the power of the story or the desire of those in power to believe it for their own purposes. The door it opens swings both ways.
The Petorik Thesis and Tales of the Global West is another of Savage’s exercises in unexpected redemption and forgotten kindnesses. Where a taker of life is as likely to celebrate those who live it as anyone else, and people Burt Harrison knows are getting murdered while eating yellow food. In coming forward, Burt becomes a person of interest.
More With Cal and Uncle Bill
When they murdered Clare in his apartment, as an ex-con Cal Daniels knew the big long story about who did it and why, would never see the light of day let alone get an airing in court and he would simply go away for the murder and the harder he made it for them to put him there, the longer he’d stay. So Cal and his Uncle Bill, a retired LAPD street cop, buried Clare by an arroyo near Joshua Tree and he knew if trouble could find him again working on the graveyard shift, it could find him anywhere. Cal also knew the idea that he may know what Clare was up to now makes him a target as well. From the daily journal he began in prison, Cal recounts the events that began that morning, as every step away from her death somehow brings him two steps back toward it and he realizes as long as he lives, the people from Clare’s past will always view him as a threat. Before it would end his infamous background will give way to a different kind of fame that will leave him well traveled and nearly dead three times.
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K. Harrison Los Angeles, CA. “More With Cal and Uncle Bill is more then a good first effort at writing a novel by a good short story writer. Rather, W. Jack Savage found a way to bring the strength of his short story telling to an engaging first person mystery set in the San Gabriel Valley of southern California. I never read sequels to anything but if Jack writes a continuation to More With Cal and Uncle Bill I’ll read it.”
State Champions
Haskell coach Will Durand is forced to use benchwarmers to finish out the regional basketball final. They pull off the biggest comeback in tournament history and the Bobcats earn a spot in the state tournament. But when the substitute star makes a disparaging remark during the post-game interview, the melee that follows results in three bitter starters and Coach Will Durand being suspended for the tournament. Assistant Coach Bill Henry takes the remaining nine players to the State Basketball Tournament and against all odds, wins the Championship. But Bill and Alice Henry are former protected witnesses and as their improbable story unfolds, small town intrigue envelops them. As the Bobcats prepare to defend their title, the Henry’s past has found them and the best efforts of friends, lovers and the combined forces of law enforcement are barely enough to avert disaster, but not enough to prevent change.
Tom Barros St. Paul, MN. “With State Champions, W. Jack Savage brings some new shades to this telling; allowing this third person narrative to feel like the eye in the sky doesn’t quite see everything. Savage’s stories are different than the ones from writers whose names are bigger than their titles. He has a sense of reality in the way things work out or don’t work out that so many writers somehow miss.”
Bumping and Other Stories
From a Southeast Asian jungle where the greatest safety is as close to the danger as you can get, to a suburban backyard where a neighbor’s cat moderates a wounded man’s personal crisis to communicate, Bumping and Other Stories is all over the map. Savage has assembled twelve very different tales including a Ukrainian prisoner’s account of the improbable events in an abandoned slaughterhouse leading to his twenty-five year incarceration, a powerful off-stage player reminded that some turns of our past can never be reconciled with our present, and an estranged anniversary couple forced to once again choose each other. The stories are hopeful and often ironic but all with a certain subjectivity that allows the reader a vote in the referendum of life’s little trials. As Bernard in Savage’s ‘Bumping’ puts it: “...the cavalcade of what-ifs that are still mine to ponder.”
Doug McIntyre 790-KABC Radio, Los Angeles, CA. "Jack Savage has written a wonderful collection of twelve very different, very human, short stories. Observant of the human condition, his flawed and damaged characters are real people with real problems. This is first rate fiction."
Alexander Wells Pasadena Star News, Pasadena, CA. "I really enjoyed reading this volume of stories. Jack Savage has a knack for delving into the inner life of his characters with vivid details, compelling inner narratives that draw the reader into interesting and occasionally weird places. He writes in a strong, unpretentious, vulnerable yet masculine tone, one that is well-suited to his subject matter. In most of the stories, ambiguity somehow comes to look like resolution. He builds his stories brick by brick, as it were, with carefully laden layers of detail that rise to thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing conclusions. Maybe in this befuddled world where narrative is so often suspect, this is what truth and morality really look like. Savage makes a pretty convincing case for it, at any rate."