Bill VanPatten

Bill VanPatten is an award-winning author of four novels and three collections of short stories. As an #ownvoices writer, gay and Latino characters tend to populate his stories. He left a successful career in academia to return to his native California and write full time. On occasion, he still performs standup comedy. He is currently working on his fifth novel as well as additional short stories.

Piano Lesson/s

In 1925, the seven hundred forty-two citizens of Mañana celebrated the town’s third anniversary as an incorporated city in the San Joaquin Valley. A dream of Alexander Jason “A.J.” Ryan—an emigrant from Ohio—he purchased the North Madera Ranch in 1912, then worked with the Secretary of State’s office in Sacramento to establish a town…

Henry

Henry Baker sat in his wheelchair outside the Caring Hearts assisted living facility in Mañana under the shade of a tree that he reckoned might be almost as old as him. Then again, maybe not. He was eighty-five and the home was built in the early 1950s, so unless the tree was already here, it may be only about seventy years old. He remembered when the building went up.
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