my books

Desert sonorous: stories

Undercover space aliens share an RV outside Tucson. A high school girl tries to make sense of the shooting of Gabby Giffords. Basketball fans stalk their team’s head coach. A young couple falls in and out of love over the course of several lifetimes. And teenage cross-country athletes run on and on through these ten stories set amid the strange desert landscapes of the American Southwest.

Desert sonorous is a unique and energetic debut collection, blending realism with flashes of experimentation. Contemporary issues―immigration, drought, shootings―hover above a cast of memorable characters in search of life’s deeper meanings. As they struggle along, comic and resigned, intelligent and quiet, sad and frustrated, their strivings resound because their lives are in so many ways our own.

purchase Desert sonorous

praise

“This collection works by stealth, like alien lights sweeping over a desert plain. All the wreckage of American life, Tucson style, is here on display: the margaritas and air-conditioning, the lost believers caught in a life most theirs the moment before it slips from their palms. Should we celebrate Bernard as our newest bard of the desert? Yes, as surely as America is on a remote 24/7 hum, throbbing alongside its desert highways.”―Edie Meidav, Juniper Prize for Fiction judge and author of Lola, California

“These ten piercing cries coming from the merciless furnace of the American Southwest desert are haunting almost beyond description. They palpably evoke the struggles of people ‘in the wilderness years’ when their potential is in threat of being extinguished. With wisdom and sensitivity, they present the disturbingly beautiful innermost dramas of aftermath.”―Kevin McIlvoy, author of The Complete History of New Mexico: Stories and Hyssop

“Bernard displays a sure hand at narrative and an impressive gift for portraying characters who seek to escape the confines of life as it’s lived in this corner of American desert.”―Foreword

“Inspired . . . “Rattle” concludes the book with almost 10 pages of loosely related thoughts about Tucson and the desert, sometimes no longer than a single word. I’ve actually never read anything quite like it, and found it to be a beautifully creative way for Bernard to finish his book about “the Old Pueblo.”―Dr. Seth Horton, El Paso Times

“Fiction that leaves one parched . . . and sometimes wanting more.”―Kirkus

Studies in the Hereafter

A disillusioned office bureaucrat in the afterlife has come to realize that maybe heaven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Bored by the endless routine of work, golf, and vegan food, he finds his one saving grace in his Field Studies: detailed reports he compiles on the living in order to determine their best fit in his world. While working on his 62nd Field Study, he begins to fall for Tetty, a detached Basque-American beauty living in Nevada, while struggling to understand what she sees in Carmelo, a clumsy scholar obsessed with the elusive Basque culture. When people start going missing from heaven for no apparent reason, the narrator learns that Field Study 62 may hold the key to explaining the disappearances.

purchase Studies in the Hereafter

praise

“Wild and imaginative.”―Charles Yu

“a soaring tribute to any human life, in all its flawed glory.” – Kaitlin Barasch, DIAGRAM

“Studies in the Hereafter blends two well-crafted and charming stories – on one side the darkly humorous mystery and on the other a deeply introspective journey of human nature. A quirky but enjoyable read.” – Blotterature

“A novel that makes us laugh while breaking our hearts.”―Christopher Coake

“A whimsical debut novel in which Bernard makes heaven the setting for a story of love and self-actualization. Highly enjoyable–and intermittently profound.” – Kirkus

“…a cleanly written narrative that dares to speculate wildly about the infrastructure of the hereafter . . . (and) also a profoundly human story. Above all, it’s a book that celebrates existence.” – Rhizomatic Ideas

“Welcomingly comic . . . permeated with a sense of intrigue.” ―Kevin Brockmeier