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A Simplified Map of the Real World
- Narrated by: Stevan Allred
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Fifteen linked stories chart a true course through the lives of families, farmers, loggers, former classmates, and the occasional stripper. In the richly imagined town of Renata, Oregon, a man watches his neighbor's big-screen TV through binoculars, an errant son paints himself silver, mysterious electrical humming emanates from an enormous barn.
In A Simplified Map of the Real World, intimate boundaries are loosened by history - and high above the strife and the hope and the often hilarious, geese seek the perfect tailwind. Stevan Allred's stunning debut deftly navigates the stubborn geography of the human heart.
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What listeners say about A Simplified Map of the Real World
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- John Allred
- 03-27-19
Heart and Soul and Original!
A great author and also a very good narrator, Stevan Allred's (I swear no relation to me!) collection of stories about Renata-a fictional small town in Oregon-is so varied and original that it is the best collection I have read in over a year. His characters cover the full spectrum of human idiosyncrasies--from the ultra uncool, to rage filled, jealous, breaking down , loyal, unloyal, successful, homeless--and on... I can't wait to hear more from this man in the future!
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Love Song to Home Town
- By Mel on 03-13-14
By: Nickolas Butler
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An Unfinished Life
- By: Mark Spragg
- Narrated by: Tony Amendola, Judith Marx
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean Gilkyson is floundering in a trailer house in Iowa with yet another brutal boyfriend when she realizes this kind of life has got to stop, especially for the sake of her daughter, Griff. But the only place they can run to is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's loved ones are dead and her father-in-law, the only person who could take them in, wishes that she was, too.
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Unfortunately I have lived this book.
- By Timothy on 05-06-09
By: Mark Spragg
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Mr. Splitfoot
- By: Samantha Hunt
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Ruth and Nat are orphans packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later Ruth's niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been?
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Huffing Ectoplasm
- By Mel on 03-03-17
By: Samantha Hunt
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The Tie That Binds
- By: Kent Haruf
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.
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stupendous narration
- By Fala Roosevelt on 04-25-23
By: Kent Haruf
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Liberty
- By: Garrison Keillor
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Lake Wobegon is in a frenzy of preparations for the Fourth of July. The town is dizzy with anticipation - until they hear of Clint's ambition to run for Congress. They know about his episodes with vodka sours, his rocky marriage, and his friendship with the 24-year-old who dresses up as the Statue of Liberty for the parade and may be buck naked beneath her robes. In Keillor's words, "It is Lake Wobegon as you imagined it - good loving people who drive each other crazy."
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Great for a long country drive.
- By Christopher on 02-19-09
By: Garrison Keillor
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A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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The Round House
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Gary Farmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and 13-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
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Heavy in My Heart
- By Mel on 01-02-13
By: Louise Erdrich
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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The Ranger
- Quinn Colson, Book 1
- By: Ace Atkins
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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After years of war, Army Ranger Quinn Colson returns home to the rugged, rough hill country of northeast Mississippi to find his native Tibbehah County overrun with corruption, decay, meth runners, and violence. His uncle, the longtime county sheriff, is dead. A suicide, he’s told, but others - like tomboy Deputy Lillie Virgil - whisper murder. In the days that follow, it’s up to Colson to discover the truth, not only about his uncle, but about his family, his friends, his town, and himself.
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Predictable but a good start to a series?
- By Michael C. Callison on 04-20-22
By: Ace Atkins
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The Prince of Frogtown
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his 10-year-old stepson.
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This guy can write.
- By colleen on 03-08-14
By: Rick Bragg
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Fourth of July Creek
- A Novel
- By: Smith Henderson
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
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The Ghost of Tom Joad & the Wrath of Grapes
- By Mel on 06-30-14
By: Smith Henderson