Martin Sierra is a struggling young writer in New York, working a regular job during the day, picking rejected manuscripts out of the mailbox at night; he is also a lonely young man looking for love in all the wrong places (the personals). His loneliness leads to obsession, as, numerous times each day, he calls his personals mailbox to check for any women answering his ad. He meets up with a couple of interesting women with appealing and not-so-appealing qualities. There’s Amaris, a gothic schoolteacher who has let a proclaimed "vampire" suck blood from her finger in a night club bathroom, and who admits to various other unusual behavior, and Lola, a depressed feminist artist-in-training who lives with a mother she just cannot get along with, visits the bathroom way too often and puts four to six spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee — hmmm. And there is Nikki, the bisexual gal-pal, who is contemplating getting back together with her girlfriend. Martin shares his adventures — in writing and dating with — with Nikki on a regular basis, and generally enjoys spending time with her.

Despite the edgy settings that this story takes place in — the night clubs of the East End of Manhattan, and the colorful characters we see there — this is, in one sense, a very traditional story about a struggling young artist looking for his place in the world and about a lonely young man looking for love. Will he find success, will he meet his true love? Whatever the answers, we are there for the ride with Martin, as Mr. Perez, in his debut novel, paints a very sympathetic character in Martin that we want to hang around with and follow his exploits. Not only does the author paint a vivid picture of the East End scene of the 90's, but he also brings us to the heart of Martin, so that soon into the book he becomes part of our family and we’re willingly along for the journey.

This is a fun, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always enjoyable, read that has us sitting with Martin at the bars, checking messages with him, and generally rooting for him. The author puts us dead center in the middle of Martin’s world. It is a hard book to put down and one that I highly recommend. I look forward to reading more books by this talented young author.

DUST IN THE WIND by Tom Morrow

Dave White is a seventeen-year-old boy in a small town in Oklahoma where nothing much happens. It’s the summer of 1960. The country’s in a recession, and, at the beginning of the novel, Dave loses his summer job to a man with a family. He’s had his eye on a car, his dream, and now that he’s lost his job, the dream is gone. The car is soon sold and despite the support of his family and friends, he gets the wanderlust. There isn’t a job to be found in town. His girlfriend, Gayle, doesn’t understand him. He wants adventure, so when another boy suggests that they go on the wheat cutting circuit for work, he soon warms to the idea. Then, in a search for adventure, and a way out of his small town (and for work), he goes in search of work on the wheat cutting circuit as a "wheatie." He soon finds out that the world is much harder away from his little town and little life, is exposed to the prejudices piled up on "wheat tramps" and gains a new sensitivity for prejudices he and others around him have long held.

He meets up with a wheatie named Frank who gives Dave a job as a driver even though he doesn’t even know how to drive, and before long Dave is on his way, learning the wheat cutting trade. He learns the prejudices the wheaties must endure from townsfolk, the horrors that occur to some workers, the losses of love, the alcoholism, and, of course, the hard but unappreciated work that is involved in cutting wheat for farmers and for consumers. It’s a hard life full of long hours, heavy drinking, and enduring the heat, dust, dirt, and prejudice, but it’s a life, at least for the summer, that leads Dave on the road to becoming a man. He travels with the group from place to place, learning the trade, observing various personal horrors, as we follow the characters, who are as lifelike and colorful as can be. Dave and Frank become close; Frank serves almost as an older brother or father-figure to Dave, teaching him what it takes to become a wheatie and, most of all, a man in the world.

Dave meets a girl, too, in Colorado, and instantly falls in love with her, and she with him. And after that, the story becomes one of whether, when Dave returns to the wheat cutting trail, he will return to his love, and whether they have a chance together, these two young people, on the edge of innocence and from very different backgrounds and worlds.

This is an exceptional book, one that takes the reader along with him. The narration is a personal one, written in the first person. We’re with Dave all the way, as he treks out into the world, rooting for him. It is very realistic, with a cast of fully realized, colorful characters that we come to love. The story is well paced and exhibits the writer’s great skill as a storyteller. Although at times he tells a little bit too much about the technical aspects of the wheat cutting business, at least for this reader, it does make the story a fully realistic one. By the time Dave falls for Mary Anne in Colorado, in less than two days, and leaves to go back on the wheat circuit, the seed of her love locked in his heart, it’s difficult to put this book down, eager as we were to find out what will happen with Dave. Will he get back with Mary Anne, his first true love? Will he return to his hometown, Crane, Oklahoma, and get back together with Gayle or even the pretty eighteen-year-old waitress, Sara, who works with Dave’s mother, has already been married and apparently divorced, and has treated Dave like a younger brother?

In short this is a wonderful story about a subject that few are very familiar about. In addition to its educational value, it offers much more than a coming of age novel about a young man in search for his place in the world, but shows a strong young man who faces his fears and dreams on his way down the road to becoming a man.