No Big Thing

A Novel

De: Wm. Stage

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

WHITE TRASH TO PICK UP TRASH, read the headline and so the story unfolds. Imagine a family living in rural Missouri, a family respected in their community, a family with typical problems in their workaday lives. What if the patriarch of this family had been involved in white supremacist activities in the distant past and was coasting on romantic notions of that time? What if he applied in the name of the Ku Klux Klan to join the State's Adopt-A-Highway program and had to fight an uphill battle to make it happen? What if the courts ruled in his favor and he enlisted his grandson, an army vet, to go on litter patrol? What if litter patrol on the outskirts of St. Louis was an even more dangerous mission than the ones the grandson had experienced in Iraq? What if that patriarch was gradually slipping into dementia and perhaps unmindful of the conniving forces—neighbors, reporters, state bureaucrats, even the hierarchy of the Klan itself—hoping to take advantage of the snowball he had set in motion. Imagine that and you would have the bones of NO BIG THING, a funny, thoughtful take on the obvious and not-so-obvious forms of discrimination. The story is also about loyalty, estrangement, and changing one's attitude over time. Throw in a colorful cast of supporting characters—a rough-and-tumble meth dealer, a fledgling social anthropologist, a Baptist minister, a Deadhead with wanderlust, an idealistic lawyer, a recreational thief with a unique specialty, and you have a novel that could take its place on a library shelf somewhere between Hiassen and Vonnegut. NO BIG THING is based on actual events that took place in and around St. Louis in the 1990s and involved litigation that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: IN A CHECKERED LIFE, Wm. Stage has been a tree trimmer, ambulance driver, public health officer, process server, and newspaper columnist. In 1972, just discharged from the U.S. Army, he began natural history studies at Thomas Jefferson College, the now-defunct “hippie college,” located on the campus of then-Grand Valley State College in Allendale, Michigan; he graduated four years later with a Bachelor of Philosophy, the same degree awarded every student attending TJC. In 1978, he was recruited by The Centers For Disease Control, Atlanta, and assigned to the St. Louis City Health Department as STD epidemiologist, a job which formed the basis of his first novel, Creatures On Display [2015]. In 1982, he left his position with CDC to devote himself to journalism and photography. His popular columns and features appeared routinely in The Riverfront Times from 1982 to 2004. He has taught feature writing at the Defense Information School [DINFOS], Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana; and photojournalism at Saint Louis University School for Professional Studies. He has been a commentator on KWMU-FM, the NPR affiliate in St. Louis. His previous works include Not Waving Drowning – Stories [2012]; Fool For Life – A Comic Memoir [2009]; and Litchfield: A Strange and Twisted Saga of Murder in the Midwest [1998]. No Big Thing is his 12th book and second novel. Wm. Stage lives in St. Louis with his wife, Mary, and their many unruly offspring.