title: ROPE BURNS: Stories from the Corner
author:  F. X. Toole 
description: The story of the 69-year-old author of this astonishing first fiction collection is a salutary one; he wrote between gigs tending boxers in their corners as a "cut man" (who stanches the blood flow and allows fights to continue), finally got a story published by a small literary magazine, was spotted by a keen-eyed agent and achieved book publication. It's amazing it took so long, because Irish-born Toole, now living and working in Los Angeles, is a natural. His knowledge of the bizarre world of professional boxing is encyclopedic and utterly persuasive, his prose is as tight as a well-laced pair of gloves and his protagonists, in this collection of five stories and a novella, are mythically heroic (and occasionally evil) but convincing archetypes. "The Money Look" is an exquisite turning-the-tables yarn at the expense of a cynical crook of a fighter; "Black Jew" is a telling tale of humble ambition woven with the lure of big money. A lacerating account of a courageous, deeply endearing hillbilly woman fighter and her sad fate, "Million $$$ Baby," is arguably the best story in the book. "Fightin' in Philly" is an almost equally moving tale of the toll the ambition to be a title fighter takes on a man. Another innocent torn up by the fight game is portrayed in "Frozen Water." Only the title novella, "Rope Burns," falls somewhat behind the sterling standard set by the other stories, with their firm authority and dead-on dialogue. It is more ambitious, even operatic, in its pitting of an almost superhumanly noble Olympic contender against a low-life East Los Angeles gang member at the time of the Rodney King riots. Like all of Toole's stories, it's breathlessly readable, even though the climactic bloodshed feels forced, as if Toole's cool narrative style cannot bear so much melodramatic freight. But make no mistake, the man is a heavyweight fiction contender. Agent, Nat Sobel. 6-city author tour. (Sept.) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
  author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations,
  or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the
  publisher.
   
   
  Home Fires
  Torquere Press Publishers
  PO Box 2545
  Round Rock, TX 78680
  Copyright 2007 by BA Tortuga
  Originally published in The Call
  Cover illustration by BSClay
  Published with permission
  ISBN: 978-1-61040-397-9
  www.torquerepress.com
  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
  form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere
  Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.
  First Torquere Press Printing: November 2012
  Printed in the USA
  Home Fires
  By BA Tortuga
   
  
  Houston crawled under the fence, whimpering as the wood caught on his skin, tore his stolen
  shirt. Only a few more 