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Strattford County #3
Zebra Skin Shirt
Narwhal Slotterfield, a chaos-loving basketball referee (aka, a “zebra”) loves bending the rules for the Underdog. Or, as he puts it, he “keeps an eye out for the little guy while simultaneously taking advantage of him.” He is in love with Veronica, a delightful woman he met by chance, and on the way home from a road trip, they stop at a diner in the run-down town of Holliday on the eastern Colorado plains. Narwhal is inspired to ask Veronica to marry him. Faced with uncomfortable truths about himself, Veronica, and even the nature of being human, Narwhal must choose to either focus myopically on himself or, like an unlikely superhero referee, to right the wrongs of the world. The concluding volume in Gregory Hill’s zany Strattford County trilogy, Zebra Skin Shirt is a wild book of time-warped stream of consciousness and space-shifting solipsism, at once a man's search for himself and a triumphant struggle for love.
- GenresFiction
304 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 16, 2018
About the author
Gregory Hill
6 books21 followersGregory Hill grew up on the eastern edge of the American west, on a wheat farm near a tiny Colorado town called Joes. His relationship with that anarchic, windswept region in the heart of America continues to this day; and his novels are saturated in the area's wildlife, language, and gleeful insanity. Relying extensively on desperate characters in barren landscapes, his work could be described as an antidote to the myth of the wholesome, God-fearing heartland.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 15, 2018
All hell breaks loose in eastern Colorado when Narwhal W. Slotterfield responds to nature’s call and heads to the bathroom inside Cookie’s Palace Diner and realizes that an overlooked onion ring, one that has tumbled from his shirt and on to the floor, might serve as token of devotion and allow him to propose marriage to his darling Veronica.
Narwhal, a basketball referee and an enthusiastic philosopher of life’s big questions and its most obscure puzzles, returns to the dining room where Veronica is waiting.
Only to realize that time has stopped.
At first, Narwhal thinks it’s a joke. A good one. The coffee being dispensed from waitress Flo’s coffee pot is frozen mid-pour.
“The whole world was trapped in amber. But there was no amber.”
Narwhal is alone in a frozen world—and we readers are launched on a whirlwind, free-fall, madcap, blender-set-to-puree, mixed up, quirky, topsy-turvy adventure that ricochets around the eastern plains as Narwhal seizes the moment to perhaps settle a score with “Blad the Impaler,” a.k.a. Bradley Ludermeyer, who works for The Denver Broncos and whose duties include enforcing the appearance clause in the cheerleaders’ contracts.
Well, “Blad” has it coming in Narwhal’s mind. It has something to do with fakery and “the pooch kick” but really there’s no need to go into a whole lot of detail about what sends Narwhal on a crazy run from town to town through storms and harrowing situations, including a frozen tornado, the first of its kind in the history of recorded literature.
There are many things Narwhal can accomplish while the world is on pause—it turns out that the world is, in fact, moving but at an almost imperceptible rate—and more than a few opportunities will present themselves as he makes his way to Denver and back.
Along the way, we get ample doses of Narhwal’s family history and a healthy dollops of his thoughts and opinions about the thrills and challenges of working as a high school basketball referee, a job that allows him to put his thumb on the scale of victory when needed.
Narwhal: “Imagine a game between the Grateful Dead and the members of Motörhead. Imagine a sloth subletting a room from a beehive. Imagine Mad Max’s wife and toddler running away from an anarchic Australian motorcycle mob. Then bring me in to clear things up. I invent new infractions, like Over-Dribbling or Failure to Use a Pivot Foot.”
Zebra Skin Shirt, “A Strattford County Yarn,” is Jack Kerouac on amphetamines. It’s Proust on meth. It’s James Joyce on nitrous oxide. It’s Lewis Carroll after smoking a bowl of The Blue Dream. The tornado of thoughts inside Narwhal’s head is in full, high-speed rotation and it scoops us up for the ride. It’s occasionally crude, relentlessly brash, and endlessly entertaining. Narwhal passes up no opportunity to tell us what he thinks about how the world is put together all seen through the prism of a basketball referee with his personal sense of justice and fairness.
Zebra Skin Shirt is being published by Conundrum Press alongside reprints of Hill’s first two novels—East of Denver (winner of the Colorado Book Award for literary fiction and the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest) and The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles.
The trilogy now comes with snazzy new psychedelic covers and the books are published under the “Strattford County” header. The package makes sense because Zebra Skin Shirt sends Narwhal smack into the vicinity of Jabez Millstone, ex-Korean War nurse with PTSD issues who played a major role in Johnny Riles, and it puts Narwhal into the middle of the bank robbery scene that played such a critical role in East of Denver.
It also makes sense because, well, every page of all three novels provides an opportunity see Hill’s lively imagination in full flight.
Narwhal, a basketball referee and an enthusiastic philosopher of life’s big questions and its most obscure puzzles, returns to the dining room where Veronica is waiting.
Only to realize that time has stopped.
At first, Narwhal thinks it’s a joke. A good one. The coffee being dispensed from waitress Flo’s coffee pot is frozen mid-pour.
“The whole world was trapped in amber. But there was no amber.”
Narwhal is alone in a frozen world—and we readers are launched on a whirlwind, free-fall, madcap, blender-set-to-puree, mixed up, quirky, topsy-turvy adventure that ricochets around the eastern plains as Narwhal seizes the moment to perhaps settle a score with “Blad the Impaler,” a.k.a. Bradley Ludermeyer, who works for The Denver Broncos and whose duties include enforcing the appearance clause in the cheerleaders’ contracts.
Well, “Blad” has it coming in Narwhal’s mind. It has something to do with fakery and “the pooch kick” but really there’s no need to go into a whole lot of detail about what sends Narwhal on a crazy run from town to town through storms and harrowing situations, including a frozen tornado, the first of its kind in the history of recorded literature.
There are many things Narwhal can accomplish while the world is on pause—it turns out that the world is, in fact, moving but at an almost imperceptible rate—and more than a few opportunities will present themselves as he makes his way to Denver and back.
Along the way, we get ample doses of Narhwal’s family history and a healthy dollops of his thoughts and opinions about the thrills and challenges of working as a high school basketball referee, a job that allows him to put his thumb on the scale of victory when needed.
Narwhal: “Imagine a game between the Grateful Dead and the members of Motörhead. Imagine a sloth subletting a room from a beehive. Imagine Mad Max’s wife and toddler running away from an anarchic Australian motorcycle mob. Then bring me in to clear things up. I invent new infractions, like Over-Dribbling or Failure to Use a Pivot Foot.”
Zebra Skin Shirt, “A Strattford County Yarn,” is Jack Kerouac on amphetamines. It’s Proust on meth. It’s James Joyce on nitrous oxide. It’s Lewis Carroll after smoking a bowl of The Blue Dream. The tornado of thoughts inside Narwhal’s head is in full, high-speed rotation and it scoops us up for the ride. It’s occasionally crude, relentlessly brash, and endlessly entertaining. Narwhal passes up no opportunity to tell us what he thinks about how the world is put together all seen through the prism of a basketball referee with his personal sense of justice and fairness.
Zebra Skin Shirt is being published by Conundrum Press alongside reprints of Hill’s first two novels—East of Denver (winner of the Colorado Book Award for literary fiction and the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest) and The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles.
The trilogy now comes with snazzy new psychedelic covers and the books are published under the “Strattford County” header. The package makes sense because Zebra Skin Shirt sends Narwhal smack into the vicinity of Jabez Millstone, ex-Korean War nurse with PTSD issues who played a major role in Johnny Riles, and it puts Narwhal into the middle of the bank robbery scene that played such a critical role in East of Denver.
It also makes sense because, well, every page of all three novels provides an opportunity see Hill’s lively imagination in full flight.
July 22, 2018
An amazing piece of art by a master storyteller who provides a thrilling conclusion to the Stratford County trilogy.
October 4, 2019
“My best course of action is to find a comfortable place to sit and watch things unfold.”
—“Zebra Skin Shirt” Gregory Hill, 128
That’s truly the best course of action with this book. Building up expectations is a waste of time with the way Hill writes: even when not much is happening (or a lot is happening but incredibly slowly) the next thing is never expected. This is what carries the book along. Even though it’s set up with a quest in mind, the revelations our good narrator Narwhal comes across on his temporal trek change his direction literally and figuratively quite a few times.
Narwhal Slotterfield as many have said is a referee by trade and by calling, by personality as much as by occupation. In the course of the book his obstacles are mainly those of a timely fashion, and so the book has the ring of a character exercise. Put your character in an elevator, or in a bathroom of a small diner, or all alone in the middle of the eastern Colorado prairie. Now, what does he do? What does he think? What does he stack on top of each other in a cheerleader formation? It all has to do with how he thinks the world works, and we get to hear most of it.
If his reflections and turns of phrase (Hill’s? Narwhal’s?) were not so novel, this book would not soar the way it does. The way he relates to Vero, his dear fiancée, is downright disturbing at times in its binary simplicity, and because we only see the events through his eyes, we never quite get a good fully four dimensional look at her. (We get the time dimension quite liberally, so it’s the third direction of her personality we’re missing.)
“She’s a foundation of truth. She digs me and all my officiantatious nonsense. She’s the one thing in the world that wouldn’t benefit from my adjudication. I would not change a thing about her.” That quote is from page 31 but it’s a decent example of his worshipful view, which allows his relationship to be an anchor for him at the same time it ties Vero down.
The way he puts one word in front of another is glorious:
“Revenge is a dish and I’m famished.” (49)
“I can alter lives, bring down government, heal the sick, disarm nuclear bombs. Hell, I could change a car tire in less time than it takes a normal human to blink. Somebody hire me for a pit crew pronto.” (123)
“Hot damn, Gretel, we’ve got our crumbs back.” (234)
But it’s unfair to do this, because each of these serve their better purpose in the flow of the narrative, each surprises with its own twist. Narwhal’s mental narrative is a little faster getting from one point to another as well, which is why perhaps it seems so unnaturally natural for him to be the guide through a timeline none of us know.
And this brings us to the contentious end: the unification (one can only suppose) of the whole trilogy this book ends. It turned a bit reminiscent of Beyond the Horizon in terms of how it holds on to the reader and how much anyone knows. I didn’t mind it as much as everyone else seems to; Hill spends the whole book giving and grabbing right back different ideas for reality, so the spontaneity of the ending doesn’t bother me. Of course it all wraps back around to certain scenes which seemed dropped into the middle of his narrative! Of course it brings in a few completely new themes and problems! Of course neither he nor we really understand! And that’s how it is and that’s how it ends which, when you think about it, isn’t really that different from how it progressed all along.
—“Zebra Skin Shirt” Gregory Hill, 128
That’s truly the best course of action with this book. Building up expectations is a waste of time with the way Hill writes: even when not much is happening (or a lot is happening but incredibly slowly) the next thing is never expected. This is what carries the book along. Even though it’s set up with a quest in mind, the revelations our good narrator Narwhal comes across on his temporal trek change his direction literally and figuratively quite a few times.
Narwhal Slotterfield as many have said is a referee by trade and by calling, by personality as much as by occupation. In the course of the book his obstacles are mainly those of a timely fashion, and so the book has the ring of a character exercise. Put your character in an elevator, or in a bathroom of a small diner, or all alone in the middle of the eastern Colorado prairie. Now, what does he do? What does he think? What does he stack on top of each other in a cheerleader formation? It all has to do with how he thinks the world works, and we get to hear most of it.
If his reflections and turns of phrase (Hill’s? Narwhal’s?) were not so novel, this book would not soar the way it does. The way he relates to Vero, his dear fiancée, is downright disturbing at times in its binary simplicity, and because we only see the events through his eyes, we never quite get a good fully four dimensional look at her. (We get the time dimension quite liberally, so it’s the third direction of her personality we’re missing.)
“She’s a foundation of truth. She digs me and all my officiantatious nonsense. She’s the one thing in the world that wouldn’t benefit from my adjudication. I would not change a thing about her.” That quote is from page 31 but it’s a decent example of his worshipful view, which allows his relationship to be an anchor for him at the same time it ties Vero down.
The way he puts one word in front of another is glorious:
“Revenge is a dish and I’m famished.” (49)
“I can alter lives, bring down government, heal the sick, disarm nuclear bombs. Hell, I could change a car tire in less time than it takes a normal human to blink. Somebody hire me for a pit crew pronto.” (123)
“Hot damn, Gretel, we’ve got our crumbs back.” (234)
But it’s unfair to do this, because each of these serve their better purpose in the flow of the narrative, each surprises with its own twist. Narwhal’s mental narrative is a little faster getting from one point to another as well, which is why perhaps it seems so unnaturally natural for him to be the guide through a timeline none of us know.
And this brings us to the contentious end: the unification (one can only suppose) of the whole trilogy this book ends. It turned a bit reminiscent of Beyond the Horizon in terms of how it holds on to the reader and how much anyone knows. I didn’t mind it as much as everyone else seems to; Hill spends the whole book giving and grabbing right back different ideas for reality, so the spontaneity of the ending doesn’t bother me. Of course it all wraps back around to certain scenes which seemed dropped into the middle of his narrative! Of course it brings in a few completely new themes and problems! Of course neither he nor we really understand! And that’s how it is and that’s how it ends which, when you think about it, isn’t really that different from how it progressed all along.
December 26, 2018
Gregory Hill (304, 1019) Zebra Skin Shirt: A Novel (A Strattford County Yarn Book 3) 12/22 posted 12/26/18
Dr. Slotterfield (husband/adopted father, U of Denver Professor 19th Century French Ethics), & Dr. Slotterfield (wife/adopted mother, U of Denver Professor Astrogeology), adopted Narwhal W. Slotterfield at an early age.
At 6’8” Narwhal (33, mixed race, basketball ref, aka zebra, adopted) never went out for basketball.
Getting razzed on by everyone at the game was quite common.
Even the cheerleaders made up a chant about Narwhal.
Lakewood, CO. Just by chance it was raining cats/dogs.
Narwhal not the best at being polite/manners gave Veronica Vasquez his umbrella as she got off the bus.
Fast forward, they exchanged information & were soon dating.
They took a trip to her hometown St. Louis, MO.
Holliday, CO., Cookie’s Palace Diner. Narwhal was going to propose to Veronica “Vero”.
Flo (waitress, aka Sandy Boudreaux), & Cookie McHamburger (aka Darrel Swets, 25+, cook) worked there. Axel Buster (old timer) was a local patron.
1 day unbelievable, Don Connelly Head of the Office of Big 12 Athletics Oversight head called Narwhal.
1st round CU Golden Buffaloes Men’s Basketball vs. Texas Tech Red Raiders.
That was the last call he ever got.
Fast forward, Keaton, CO. What did Veronica “Vero” Vasquez write on a piece of paper to Narwhal?
Narwhal has taken it upon himself to help provide for Charlene Morning who is P/G from either John/Vernon Riles.
What surprise did she have for him?
I did not receive any type of compensation for reading & reviewing this book. While I receive free books from publishers & authors, I am under no obligation to write a positive review. Only an honest one.
A very awesome book cover, great font & writing style. A fairly well written humor (satire) book. It wasn’t very easy for me to read/follow from start/finish, but never a dull moment. There were no grammar/typo errors, nor any repetitive or out of line sequence sentences. Lots of exciting scenarios, with several twists/turns & a great set of unique characters to keep track of. I’m not sure I understood this story content. That said I will only rate it at 3/5 stars.
Thank you for the free author; Goodreads; MakingConnections; Making Connections discussion group talk; Conundrum Press; AmazonCrossing; Amazon Digital Services LLC.; book
Tony Parsons MSW (Washburn)
Dr. Slotterfield (husband/adopted father, U of Denver Professor 19th Century French Ethics), & Dr. Slotterfield (wife/adopted mother, U of Denver Professor Astrogeology), adopted Narwhal W. Slotterfield at an early age.
At 6’8” Narwhal (33, mixed race, basketball ref, aka zebra, adopted) never went out for basketball.
Getting razzed on by everyone at the game was quite common.
Even the cheerleaders made up a chant about Narwhal.
Lakewood, CO. Just by chance it was raining cats/dogs.
Narwhal not the best at being polite/manners gave Veronica Vasquez his umbrella as she got off the bus.
Fast forward, they exchanged information & were soon dating.
They took a trip to her hometown St. Louis, MO.
Holliday, CO., Cookie’s Palace Diner. Narwhal was going to propose to Veronica “Vero”.
Flo (waitress, aka Sandy Boudreaux), & Cookie McHamburger (aka Darrel Swets, 25+, cook) worked there. Axel Buster (old timer) was a local patron.
1 day unbelievable, Don Connelly Head of the Office of Big 12 Athletics Oversight head called Narwhal.
1st round CU Golden Buffaloes Men’s Basketball vs. Texas Tech Red Raiders.
That was the last call he ever got.
Fast forward, Keaton, CO. What did Veronica “Vero” Vasquez write on a piece of paper to Narwhal?
Narwhal has taken it upon himself to help provide for Charlene Morning who is P/G from either John/Vernon Riles.
What surprise did she have for him?
I did not receive any type of compensation for reading & reviewing this book. While I receive free books from publishers & authors, I am under no obligation to write a positive review. Only an honest one.
A very awesome book cover, great font & writing style. A fairly well written humor (satire) book. It wasn’t very easy for me to read/follow from start/finish, but never a dull moment. There were no grammar/typo errors, nor any repetitive or out of line sequence sentences. Lots of exciting scenarios, with several twists/turns & a great set of unique characters to keep track of. I’m not sure I understood this story content. That said I will only rate it at 3/5 stars.
Thank you for the free author; Goodreads; MakingConnections; Making Connections discussion group talk; Conundrum Press; AmazonCrossing; Amazon Digital Services LLC.; book
Tony Parsons MSW (Washburn)
January 1, 2019
This book began with an outstanding premise with time coming to a crawl and our intrepid hero with his sense of fairness and justice and giving the world its just due. The first 2 parts of the book were filled with fun and humor and kept me wanting more. However, the last 2 parts seemed to be an acid trip gone horribly wrong. I felt like Alice going through the rabbit hole into the heart of a madhouse. Had the story stayed on its initial trajectory it would have been a most fun ride recalling memories of Douglas Adams. All told, the first half of the book was 5 stars with the last 2 parts being only 2 at most. I have to give it 3 stars overall. Perhaps if I had read the first 2 books in the trilogy, it might have helped but Gregory Hill definitely held my attention through the first half.
April 19, 2018
Looks like I'm doing another paid review of this one, so I'll circle back with a link at some point...
(Pssst... it's good! You should read it!)
(Pssst... it's good! You should read it!)
Want to Read
February 1, 2019Thank you for the chance to win this book! Very eclectic, but well-written, great humor.
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