Sacrifice and the Sweet Life

"They had never felt the fall, never sensed their descent. They heard only a deafening rumble, and then there was darkness—only darkness and crushing weight…”So begins a profound and disturbing collection of eight short stories, four poems and one vignette by award-winning author David A. Ross.A lonely and deranged sorcerer; a noon-time Bozo, a local television-star; observant and bewildered tourists; angry, drunken cock-fighters; obedient anarchists; a guilt-ridden engineer: each one experiences the curious juxtaposition of the two overriding ideas contained within the collection’s title, Sacrifice and the Sweet Life.In 'NL Centrum', a drug-ruined anarchist proclaims, "The world theater maintains drama and tension through the perpetuation of greed and injustice and so forth…" In 'La Sorcière de Seillans', a driven sculptor is obsessed to "explore the space within the stones", and in 'In Search of the Perfect Former-Communist Beach Town', a malcontented traveler observes, "Some of the locals are a bit surly, Sean, so let's try to overlook ungracious behavior. Just enjoy the shore, the rich red wine and the paprika." One thing is certain as Giuvanni, the lust-ridden Florentine hotel clerk, laments, "In our world, sacrifice is unavoidable."