The Man Who Built Boxes and other stories

“Each story is a minor masterpiece of the writer's craft.” Midwest Book Review

In these twelve stories, you’ll meet a remarkable cast of complex, quirky characters tangled up in the limits they’ve put on their lives. Driven by love or loneliness, like the man in the title, they’ve boxed themselves in. Frank Tavares tells their stories with humor and compassion. And while the themes may be familiar - crumbling marriages, feuding neighbors, sparring business partners, and the endless searching for what might have been - here they become fresh, unpredictable, and surprising. This exciting debut collection from a first-rate storyteller will haunt and fascinate you long after you finish reading.

“Too often, life stuns us with nuances and a mix of emotions that need time and patience to digest. Frank Tavares’s greatest gift is in delivering all of these layers and textures in a single pass and doing so with a beautiful taste of humor to make it all palatable. The stories contained in The Man Who Built Boxes run the whole gamut from painful to absurd to pure joy and comedy. . . . This is a writer you’ll want to know, writing a life you’ll be happy you’ve lived in for a while.” Jack B. Bedell, author of Bone-Hollow, True: New & Selected Poems and director of Louisiana Literature Press.

“Each story is a minor masterpiece of the writer's craft. The totality of this outstanding collection, while thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end, is also thoughtful and thought-provoking and while works of fiction, resonate with real life experiences of us all. "The Man Who Built Boxes And Other Stories" is highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library collections.” Midwest Book Review