FOMITE
Guilt and the need to repent drive the antiheroes in Tom Walker’s dark (and often darkly funny) stories:
• A gullible journalist falls for the 40-year-old stripper he profiles in a magazine.
• A faithless husband abandons his family and joins a support group for lost souls.
• A tough prosecuting attorney grapples with the suicide of his gay son.
• An aging misanthrope must make amends to five former victims.
• An egoistic naval hero is haunted by apparitions of his dead wife and a mysterious little girl.
The seven tales in Signed Confessions measure how far guilt-ridden men will go to obtain a forgiveness no one can grant but themselves.
About the Author
Tom Walker has written hundreds of magazine features, profiles, short stories, and one previous book, Banking on Tradition (2000). Formerly the editor of SA: The Magazine of San Antonio and two airline magazines (Southwest and Continental), he is currently writing the histories of two dynasties dating back to the Norman Invasion. Walker lives in San Antonio with his artist wife Lila and their Alaskan Malamute rescue dog Gypsy.
Reviews
“A compelling look at guilt and absolution and the cost of each to wounded men.”
— Kirkus Reviews
"Tom Walker's Signed Confessions is a collection of witty, sardonic, and tantalizingly dark stories that carry weighty matters -- guilt, frustration, anger, manliness, confusion and confession, love, lust, lap dancers — all in a manner startlingly original and consistently entertaining. Walker is a gutsy and intriguing writer."
—Peggy Payne, author of Sister India, Revelation and Cobalt Blue
“Confessing can reveal buried secrets and sins, and Tom Walker’s characters in Signed Confessions do a lot of that. A retired naval hero confesses to having neglected his dead wife, who haunts him, and lesbian daughter, who accuses him. A reporter writing an article on gentlemen’s clubs learns things about himself that he didn’t want to know. A chronic failure runs away from his wife and son to join support groups, only to fall in love with a doomed woman in his favorite group and run away again. Every story offers shocking revelations about its characters — and perhaps about us, the readers, as well. A surprising and rewarding collection.”
— Robert Flynn, author of North to Yesterday, In the House of the Lord, and Jade: The Law
