Dispatches from the Cold

What would you do if strange letters began appearing in your mail box? Read them? When the unnamed narrator of this novel opens misdirected letters, he enters the harsh, disturbing world of Farrel Gorden. Gorden, an assistant manager in a sporting goods store near New Hampshire, hates his new Korean- American boss, and is on the verge of losing control of his hatred. As we watch the narrator reconstruct the recent events in Gorden's life, including an affair with his boss' wife and the wrenching consequences that follow, the paths of these two disparate characters- letter reader and letter writer- converge violently as each intrudes in the life of the other. This is a story that blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary, the violent and the mundane, and negotiates the exterior world and interior workings of a vengeful mind.

Leonard Chang of Los Angeles, CA Leonard Chang was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. He attended Dartmouth College and received his BA in philosophy from Harvard University, and his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine.