Rags and Bones: Collected Writings of Verland T Whipple

Fourteen poems, stories, and one-act plays - moving from tenderness to terror, comedy to elegy. Rags and Bones is a partial collection of Verland T. Whipple's writing, compiled and illustrated by his son. A hired hand who isn't what he seems. A soldier's last act of mercy. A doctor's office full of mistaken identities. A town bum whose monument changes everything. Sharp, unsentimental, and quietly devastating by turns - this is a collection that earns its title.A collection that moves from the tenderness of a father's love poem to the terror of a hired hand who is not what he seems - from a mistaken-identity comedy in a doctor's waiting room to a soldier's final, silent act of mercy in a shell hole at night.Rags and Bones gathers the poetry, short fiction, and one-act plays of Verland T. Whipple - fourteen pieces written across a lifetime, now compiled and illustrated by his son. Some will make you laugh out loud. Others will stay with you long after the page is turned.Inside, you'll find: - Poems of love, longing, and quiet grief - tender, direct, unadorned- Short stories that turn from the everyday into the uncanny, including a haunting tale of a farm wife and the hired hand who arrives out of nowhere, and a wartime story of cowardice, sacrifice, and the truth no one wants to hear- One-act plays full of mistaken identities and pitch-perfect comic timing, alongside a loving send-up of the classic Western melodrama- A fable-like tale of a town's forgotten bum, and the monument that arrives to upend everything the town thought it knew about himWhipple's voice moves easily between warmth and shadow, comedy and elegy - sometimes within the same page. This collection is a portrait of a writer who paid close attention to people: their vanities, their kindnesses, their fears, and the stories they told themselves to get through the night.Featuring original illustrations created for this edition, Rags and Bones is a book for readers who love language that doesn't waste a word, and stories that don't tell you how to feel.