The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories

by Debra Marquart

Fiction. Short stories and short-short stories about traveling rock musicians that focus on the unseen, less than glamorous side of touring as a struggling rock band—the personal tolls, the grueling poverty, the gnawing hunger for fame, and the small and unlikely moments of redemption. These characters are slowly realizing that their dreams are slipping away, that age and hard living have worn them down, that their funky, rootless, rock & roll lives have not taken on the grandeur they'd envisioned.

Genres: Fiction

197 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Debra Marquart is a professor of English at Iowa State University. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. Marquart's work has appeared in numerous journals such as The North American Review, Three Penny Review, New Letters, River City, Crab Orchard Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Sun Magazine, Southern Poetry Review, Orion, Mid-American Review and Witness.

In the seventies and eighties, Marquart was a touring road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Her collection of short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories draws from her experiences as a female road musician. Marquart continues to perform with a jazz-poetry rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she has released two CDs: Orange Parade (acoustic rock), and A Regular Dervish (jazz-poetry).

Marquart's work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction Award (Crab Orchard Review), the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize from New Rivers Press, the Minnesota Voices Award, the Pearl Poetry Award (Pearl Editions), the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.

A performance poet, Marquart is the author of two poetry collections: Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness. Her memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was published by Counterpoint Books in 2006. It received the "Elle Lettres" award from Elle Magazine and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Marquart is currently at work on a novel, set in Greece, titled The Olive Harvest, and a roots memoir about emigration, geographical flight, and cultural amnesia titled Somewhere Else this Time Tomorrow.

Reviews

[jojo Lazar]

2nd read, love this book so. got it used randomly. it's AMAZING. and i never thought my life would be anything like it, and now that it is...it's nice to read art that imitates the life you never thought you'd have...made of love?

and this lady is a poet, too! i haven't looked up a lot of her other stuff, yet, but have heard great things. i like how writers keep circling back in/to your life

[Aaron Rudolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular stories! This is a great short story collection, one of my favorites. I have taught this book in my creative writing classes. The stories of this collection are subtle, clever, fun, and delicious. I read these stories multiple times in order to pick up all the small but important details. It’s fun reading! The music resonates from story to story.

[Roger Wetlaufer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun book to read and boy could I relate. It was very emotional finishing this short book as the author really captured the story behind the story. The feelings of life on the road in the music business. I actually would have liked more detail but she captured the emotions very well. Just a fun romp through the people and the places that make rock and roll music.

[Jan Hough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deb Marquart’s the Hunger Bone, is a collection of fast paced short stories that reveal the lives of rock and rollers struggling to make it in the game. These musicians aren’t the prima donna’s of the rock world and are instead ordinary folks trying to make a break in the world and struggling. Marquart’s direct prose speaks to you as quick as a hard guitar riff or rumbling drum solo could. The characters in these twenty-one short stories bounce from club to club and bar to bar in small towns while trying to hold on to their dreams.

In “Playing for the Door,” Marquart gives us a glimpse of how many young musicians and aspiring rockers develop and the ways they progress to the next stage. “They listen to records and try to make themselves sound like the person on the record. Sometimes they do, but mostly they sound like themselves trying to sound like someone else.” Lots of practice and big breaks playing parties of girlfriends and older brothers drive along the dream. Marquart shows that music life isn’t all glam and fame. “And the way that everyone in the band quit, one by one, and was replaced by others who quit, always for the same reason—no money, and
eventually, man you’ve got to do something with your life.”

This was my second reading of The Hunger Bone, and it was as enjoyable the second time as the first. This book is a must read for those who appreciate and understand the day to day grind that so many musicians live. These stories will keep you reading.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book did read very quickly, which I thought was nice, and she's very good at pacing the stories and flow. I really enjoy authors who write this way, with no unnecessary or wasted words. My only issue was I felt that many of the stories were incomplete, or there could have been more to them. Would have loved to see her take some of them further. I will definitely be reading more of her work though. I have her memoir and can't wait to read it!

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We pulled into our guitar player's driveway at first light." And we're off on a rock 'n' roll journey through 21 short stories (some short-short) that are gritty, real and full of beautiful literary flights.

[Christopher]

Not every story wowed me, but definitely some gems within.