Ephraim's Ark: and Other Tales of Southern Nevada

Ephraim's Ark: and Other Tales of Southern Nevada

The U.S. Government begins to test the Atom Bomb in the Southern Nevada desert. Ten-year-old Ephraim Olsen wants to leave his home town of Divine Massacres, barely forty miles away. Even if it means gathering two of every kind of pet and desert fauna into the old V-2 rocket that adorns the Blast-Off Gas Station, he’s determined to escape to Mars. Ephraim’s Ark is a fable of a time when American popular culture embraced the Atom Bomb. Pre-Cold War. Pre-Cancer from radiation. Included are two short stories of the blue-collar residents of that distinct stretch of desert. No Gamblers. No gangsters. No Vegas Strip. Just a compromised vision of the American Dream in the shadow of the City of Sin. I have known Michael for many years now and have come to be "infected" by his love of the Southwest. His stories are populated by a myriad of unique characters that spring from and are nourished by this very special part of the United States. He writes of an amalgam of dreamers and scoundrels, seekers and prospectors, children and mobsters, who sometimes clash, sometimes harmonize but are always, and most importantly, human. And never far away in the midst of the storytelling, even in the shadow of A-bomb testing, is a sly humor. A chuckle or a full belly laugh, Michael gives the reader a range with which to interact. ~Oscar-winning film director Euzhan Palcy Wallace Stegner has written that a location doesn't become a "place" until it has a poet. Amundsen, who grew up in the harsh desert landscape in the shadows of Sin City, is one of Stenger's "placed" people. In Ephraim's Ark and Other Tales of Southern Nevada , he shares the inner lives and stories of those who call this region home. Divine Massacres and the other scrappy towns in and around Las Vegas can now join the Salinas Valley, Winesburg, Ohio and Yoknapatawpha County as a literary place. In Amundsen, the Southern Nevada desert has found its poet. ~Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus, author of Holding up the Moon: A Memoir in Haiku Amundsen's nostalgic story of young Ephraim and the small town of Divine Massacres brings Atom Bomb era Nevada to life in the most colorful way possible —through the hopes, fears, and dreams of a captivating group of quirky yet totally realistic characters. With a screen-writer and filmmaker's eye for detail, the author paints vivid images with his words, so much so that even the businesses of the struggling community have memorable personalities. While the dilemma that faces the adult citizens is intense, the children's adventures are frequently hilarious. That makes for a great mix, and a terrific tale. ~Brian Wayne Weber, Las Vegas author and history buff You are drawn into the remote Nevada desert settlement of Divine Massacres by its near-death crash into a desolate mining ghost town and its post-war populace of desperate young veteran families hoping for a renewed boom of prosperity promised by the infant Atomic Age. What you are not prepared for is to be pleasantly ambushed by bombs of surreal hilarity from the eccentric little kid full of comic book and radio pop-culture interpretations of impending doom which he invokes to drive the town crazy. This modern-day Noah leads the grade school kids on a lofty mission: gather pairs of cats, dogs, chickens, and even desert tortoises for departure from Earth on a war-surplus Nazi V-2 rocket. It's an amazing tale of childish imagination hell-bent on disrupting an adult world blindly staking their futures, eager to roll the dice on nuclear testing. ~Patrick Dawson, author of Mr. Rodeo: The Big Bronc Years of Leo Cremer and The Montana Cowboy How will ten-year-old Ephraim react when atomic testing arrives in his small Nevada desert town? Michael Amundsen tells a story filled with charm, wit, and compassion, perfectly capturing the life of a young boy and his fears in the uncertain times of the 1950s. ~Ann Lewis Hamilton, television and film producer/writer and author of Expecting Ephraim's Ark by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (11/2024) Entertaining and Moving Michael Amundsen's "Ephraim's Ark: and Other Tales of Southern Nevada," is a captivating collection of short stories that vividly reflect the struggles of life in the southern desert near Las Vegas. To survive in this desert, the people must be resilient. All three narratives involve characters who are grappling with poverty and the hope of a better future. Amundsen uses a mixture of grit and humor to create these tales involving characters that manage to be flawed yet still endearing. The main story, "Ephraim's Ark," (The Story of the Boy and the Bomb)was also my favorite. It is about Ephraim, an imaginative boy from the town of Divine Massacres. Ephraim becomes fixated on the atomic bomb testing that is scheduled to be near his home. Driven by fear, he creates a plan to commandeer an old V-2 rocket that is on display at a local gas station. Ephraim directs his friends to bring their