Silver Thaw and Selected Stories

by Ron Johnson

Silver Thaw is set in the late '60s in the Great Central Valley of California. It's a story of four friends forced to confront the moral, sexual and political parameters which will define their adult lives. There is the loss of innocence precipitated by the Vietnam War, but the main battle is an internal struggle that each must encounter and confront within themselves. Art is a quiet, independent-minded college student who wants to become a high school shop teacher. He has recently become intimate with June, a survivor of the working class trailor park, where her mother died of alcoholism. She is attending college to escape the pain of her past. Her roomate Honey is seeking a life with a man she can believe in. An elemental, aggressive woman, sexually confident, Honey is a woman by whom men define themselves. She is falling in love with Jess, who is finishing college under the Army ROTC program. Jess wants a part of Vietnam, and he wants Honey. The war can't wait, and she can. To survive, the four must recognize their own flawed human nature, and must learn to defend the notion of human decency in the ordinary conduct of their affairs. Selected Stories: Award winning stories previousy released in some of America's favorite literary journals, these works of fiction will leave the reader wanting for days gone by, a more innocent time in our history.