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Bone Chalk
Ride shotgun down the back-roads of the Great Plains as Reese becomes Willy the Wildcat at a small Division II school, drives a tractor into an outbuilding his first week on the job, and discovers, sometimes with horror, the truth - after immersing himself in the lives of strangers, friends and prisoners. Travel to San Quentin prison in San Francisco Bay where he has full access and isn't afraid to ask the tough questions. Join him in a superstore pharmacy prophylactic aisle. Explore teenage angst and desire with him at a Midwest skating rink. Accompany him as he archives his mother-in-law's peculiarities, often verbatim. Reese was born in Iowa, but moved to Omaha at age seven where he grew up in what passes for "the big city" in Nebraska. He married into a farm family, moved to northeast Nebraska, and this book captures the disparity between urban and rural America. He takes sympathetic, comic, and serious looks at the people he writes about, offering a humorous and equally critical view of himself. He captures those moments in the belly of the heartland, where all are welcome to the strangeness of good company and rural behaviors, and in doing so, these essays record the zeitgeist of the time. The intersections of Reese's stories about the incarcerated or genuine mid-western sensibilities allow readers to take the reins and become part of his ongoing journey to find his place in the world. Reese is a wandering minstrel, and as the author of four widely-praised books of poetry, he knows how to blow our hearts sideways.
"JIM REESE'S NEW BOOK is what we might think of as 'an evening's entertainment, ' and it's an enriching entertainment at that, witty and funny, shadowed by feelings deeper and more meaningful, a kind of operetta in prose, and it will stick with me for a good long while. I recommend it." -Ted Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 13th Poet Laureate of the United States "JIM REESE... HE'S OUR MARK TWAIN of this century ... Jim writes about the everyday experience, and he, in my view, is therefore America's poet." -Grace Cavalieri, from the Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress "Jim Reese's Bone Chalk is like a strong shot of rye, a piercing look from a stranger, or a stray bullet in the dark. There is a startling honesty that slams you against the wall by the throat and holds you there until you see the truth, a unique perspective into the world of true crime from a gifted writer." -Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire novels, the basis for the Netflix drama Longmire
"JIM REESE'S NEW BOOK is what we might think of as 'an evening's entertainment, ' and it's an enriching entertainment at that, witty and funny, shadowed by feelings deeper and more meaningful, a kind of operetta in prose, and it will stick with me for a good long while. I recommend it." -Ted Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 13th Poet Laureate of the United States "JIM REESE... HE'S OUR MARK TWAIN of this century ... Jim writes about the everyday experience, and he, in my view, is therefore America's poet." -Grace Cavalieri, from the Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress "Jim Reese's Bone Chalk is like a strong shot of rye, a piercing look from a stranger, or a stray bullet in the dark. There is a startling honesty that slams you against the wall by the throat and holds you there until you see the truth, a unique perspective into the world of true crime from a gifted writer." -Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire novels, the basis for the Netflix drama Longmire
154 pages, Paperback
Published November 9, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 6, 2019
An eclectic collection of essays tackling the experience of growing up in a major Midwestern city, how it contrasts with living as an adult in a much smaller Midwestern town, as well as experience teaching within the criminal justice system.
June 3, 2024
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Soul. What does that mean? Does it even exist? If you want an answer to that question, then author Jim Reese’s book, Bone Chalk, will take you on a journey of discovery toward the truth. Hands down, Reese, as a writer, is the Jack Kerouac of the Heartland. He writes with soul, with the beat of his bone’s chalk, about growing up in the big city and moving to rural America to lay down roots.
I did the opposite. I grew up in a small city surrounded by dairy farms and moved to “the big city” after college, then to more big cities as I pursued a newspaper career in an often ruthless and always-evolving media industry. Along the way, I indulged in the anonymity, opportunities and freedom of the big city and its dazzling allure. In trade, my memory of the small city I grew up in has faded into fractured vignettes. The price of it all was losing a sense of my roots, as I transported them across the nation like a potted plant.
Reese’s book is a collection of essays about his life and planting roots in rural America; about crime and punishment (with an up-close view of his teaching experiences in rural prisons and beyond); about misunderstandings and revelations; about life and death under a glittering dome of stars not obscured by big city lights and exhaust. It helped me to reassemble the disconnected and distant lived experiences of my youth in the small city that formed the essence of my own bone’s chalk as a writer. His book was very much a rewarding, insightful read that helped me confront my rural past and reconnect it with my urban present — and made a future path forward for me, and America, seem far less daunting in the bargain.
— Bill Conroy, investigative journalist and author of "Dispatches from the House of Death"
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Soul. What does that mean? Does it even exist? If you want an answer to that question, then author Jim Reese’s book, Bone Chalk, will take you on a journey of discovery toward the truth. Hands down, Reese, as a writer, is the Jack Kerouac of the Heartland. He writes with soul, with the beat of his bone’s chalk, about growing up in the big city and moving to rural America to lay down roots.
I did the opposite. I grew up in a small city surrounded by dairy farms and moved to “the big city” after college, then to more big cities as I pursued a newspaper career in an often ruthless and always-evolving media industry. Along the way, I indulged in the anonymity, opportunities and freedom of the big city and its dazzling allure. In trade, my memory of the small city I grew up in has faded into fractured vignettes. The price of it all was losing a sense of my roots, as I transported them across the nation like a potted plant.
Reese’s book is a collection of essays about his life and planting roots in rural America; about crime and punishment (with an up-close view of his teaching experiences in rural prisons and beyond); about misunderstandings and revelations; about life and death under a glittering dome of stars not obscured by big city lights and exhaust. It helped me to reassemble the disconnected and distant lived experiences of my youth in the small city that formed the essence of my own bone’s chalk as a writer. His book was very much a rewarding, insightful read that helped me confront my rural past and reconnect it with my urban present — and made a future path forward for me, and America, seem far less daunting in the bargain.
— Bill Conroy, investigative journalist and author of "Dispatches from the House of Death"
February 21, 2021
Excellent. Touching & funny in equal measure.
February 13, 2022
A beautiful book of essays and prose poems. Anyone from a small town or rural background will appreciate this thing.
September 13, 2025
Great selection of poems and essays. Very easy to read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews