The Music Box Treaty

From the Back Cover One part Walter Mitty, one part Lord Jim, one part Bartleby, and three parts us. Marion Monaghan dreams of being an existential hero out of the Hemingway novels he used to teach before retreating into a railroad shack on the edge of Lodgepole, a town "right in the bellybutton of the country" and a former hunting ground of "The Band That Don't Eat Dog." Caught between feeling "the stuff that touchdowns are made of and the urge toward utter surrender, he joins the Lodgepole Volunteer Fire Department & Rescue Squad to escape defeat by what Randy Newman calls "the chuckholes down memory lane." With a poet's eye, a stand-up's wit, and a gifted storyteller's power to keep us engaged, Duggin narrates Marion's struggles to make a treaty between the opposing sides of himself in a novel as enchanting as the protagonist's magical music box. -- William Trowbridge author of Ship of Fool and The Complete Book of Kong In Marion Monaghan, Richard Duggin has created a singular eccentric--English Lit professor, East Coast transplant to the "bellybutton of the country," aspiring volunteer fire department member, and connoisseur. Marion is the chronicler of memory, imagination, and the heart's quixotic and soul-forging desires. The Music Box Treaty is a delightful read, a treat for anyone who enjoys flights of fancy, modest everyday heroism, salt-of-the-earth characters, and a darn good sentence or two. -- Amy Hassinger author of Nina:Adolescence and The Priest's Madonna About the Author Richard Duggin was born and raised in New England and now lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where he has taught fiction writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha for more than forty-five years. His published work includes two recently published books of fiction, The Music Box Treaty (2011) and Why Won't You Talk To Me?:Selected Stories (2011), as well as short stories which have appeared in such periodicals as American Literary Journal, Beloit Fiction Journal, Laurel Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Sun, Playboy, and elsewhere. His work has been cited by Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Playboy Magazine Best Fiction. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Merit Awards.Duggin is founder of the UNO Writer's Workshop, offering an undergraduate BFA degree in creative writing, and of the University of Nebraska MFA in Writing, a low-residency two-year graduate degree program.