TROLLEYED

by David J. Morris

Michael Madigan is no ordinary citizen. As an employed husband, father and homeowner, he lives an orthodox life in mid-90s London...but his mind is faltering and his life is about to alter...dramatically. Unable to contend with a personal upheaval, his troubled mind relinquishes its tenuous grip on reality and his world plunges into a maelstrom of turmoil. Fuelled by alcohol, he ventures on a self-destructive journey littered with gruesome memories and disturbing flashbacks, tragic brutality, darkly comic episodes and gut-wrenching emotion. Can he escape his demons and the impending abyss? How will the characters he encounters affect his behaviour? Will he reconstruct his life? Or continue to plummet? A shocking revelation, coupled with a distinct realization, determine his path...

502 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 2011

About the author

Dave Morris is a San Diego-based writer, photographer and teacher. A former Marine infantry officer, he has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Slate, Salon and the Virginia Quarterly Review since 2003. His 2006 dispatch from Iraq, titled “The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground’ was included in the Best American Nonrequired Reading series.

His writing has been featured on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation,” and he continues to contribute to numerous print and digital publications including The New Yorker online, The Surfer’s Journal and Foreign Policy’s “Best Defense” blog.

In 2008, he was awarded a creative nonfiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as residencies at The MacDowell Colony and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2009, he won the Staige D. Blackford Award for nonfiction writing from the Virginia Quarterly Review.