What: A reading and signing with Nevada author H. Lee Barnes for his new book, Car Tag.

When: Friday, February 24, 2012 from 6:30 to 8:00PM

Where: Sundance Books and Music,  121 California Avenue, Reno, Nevada 89509

About the Author: H. Lee Barnes lives and writes in Las Vegas, where he teaches English and creative writing at the College of Southern Nevada. In his past lives, he was a soldier, a deputy sheriff, a narcotics agent, a casino dealer, and a martial arts instructor. His short stories have won the Willamette and the Arizona Authors Association fiction awards. Gunning for Ho, his first collection of short stories, was a finalist for the Stephen Turner First Fiction Award offered by the Texas Institute of Letters. In 2009 he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

What People are Saying:

From Janet Walker at bookpleasures.com: “Only two American author’s books have moved me to tears; at age nine years, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and as an adult, reading Larry Mc Murtry’s, The Evening
Star. Now there’s a third – H. Lee Barnes, a good writer touched by greatness. Read his latest book, Car Tag; you’ll be glad you did.”

Susan Skorupa from the Reno Gazette-Journal: “‘Car Tag,’ a new novel by H. Lee Barnes, could have ended no other way than the way it does. There’s sadness and emotional uplift that the reader might not recognize until after closing the book. Tragedy makes room for renewal and hope for despair.”

D. Brian Burghart editor of the Reno News and Review: “And now, halfway through this ‘book review,’ I’m going to make a discernible statement about Car Tag: If you like the types of writers and topics I’ve just described, you’re going to like this book. I’m not saying H. Lee Barnes is a member of that pantheon of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Burroughs types, I’m just saying he writes like them. Like if someone were reading novels written in 1940 before starting this, he or she wouldn’t be fundamentally sidetracked by intrinsic differences.”

The Midwest Book Review: “One mistake may shatter a family. Car Tag is a dramatic novel following the fallout from the killing of a police officer by a young man. Over the next nine years, Drew Debecki crusades to try to save his brother from death row, going to various extent to do so. In his journey, he must remind himself of the memory of his brother in order to rescue him from his certain doom. Car Tag is a thoughtful novel of family and mystery, recommended.”

Also, read about Lee and the book in this article in High Country News.

CAR TAG by H. Lee Barnes: From the desert to the glittering promise of Las Vegas, Nevada has long been the backdrop for heartbreak and broken dreams. Everyone is susceptible to the traps and temptations, but some families make it easy to give in. Award-winning H. Lee Barnes chronicles the Debecki sons in his latest novel Car Tag (Virginia Avenue Press) with devastating honesty.

“Their boyhood wasn’t recorded, not the way that some families preserve moments and events. That, he reminded himself, is because there were so few events. They fabricated their own growing-up experiences through mischief, daring, and a little petty larceny.”

In what may be the quintessential Nevada novel, the reader re-lives the chaotic childhood of the Debecki brothers, while the story weaves in the present-day consequences. Younger Billy Debecki has killed a rural police officer; big brother Drew is a police officer on the Las Vegas police force trying to spare Billy the death penalty. The story plays out against a background so vividly drawn it might be a character in its own right.  Moving
from the open desert near Rhyolite, Nevada to the Nevada Supreme Court, Car Tag probes the ambiguities of the death penalty while exploring the complexities of family life. Ultimately the story is revealed to be a mystery shrouded by time and grief, with Barnes skillfully showing us how the chords of memory are stretched thin through time and tragedy but maintain a connection that might save Billy’s life.

Barnes sees an enormous potential for untapped literary resources in his home state. “I really think the parts that have to be explored about Nevada are the parts in between — the trailer communities out in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “Maybe these little places are the last vestiges of the Old West, where the maverick spirit that first brought people here still exists; I’d like to think that they’re populated by people who embrace the idea of escaping the shackles of life in urban and suburban settings.”