Dooling Fiction

Published in the The New Yorker magazine, Richard Dooling’s Bush Pigs is a harrowing tale of reverse culture shock and a cult favorite among expats who wander abroad and are sometimes unprepared for the trauma of returning to the first world. After three years in the bush, a Peace Corps Volunteer is evacuated from war-torn Sierra Leone and sent home to Omaha, Nebraska, where he attempts to celebrate his return in a steak house. What happens next is called reverse culture shock. G.K. Chesterton put it this way: “The whole object of traveling abroad is not to set foot on foreign land; it is to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land when one returns.” By Richard Dooling, author of White Man’s Grave, a novel. Actor Mark Nelson read Bush Pigs live at Symphony Space in New York City for the famous Selected Shorts program. His performance was recorded and played on NPR over the years. You can listen to Mark Nelson’s performance of Richard Dooling’s Bush Pigs by clicking HERE.   Bush Pigs, a short story, by Richard Dooling   Bush Pigs participates in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program.    

A Novel by Richard Dooling Read the first chapter of The Journals of Eleanor Druse at Amazon. I wrote this book as a tie-in to the Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital project. Eleanor Druse, inspired by the original character from Lars Von Trier’s mini-series and played by Diane Ladd in our version, was a delightful voice to inhabit during the months before Kingdom Hospital aired. The project also enabled me to investigate the abundant literature on out-of-body and near-death experiences and to investigate the “land in between,” or “Swedenborgian space,” as Sally Druse so loved to call it. The Journals is a prequel to Kingdom Hospital. If you peruse the Amazon reviews, you’ll see that some readers are bothered by this, but most don’t seem to mind. The novel is a prelude to the series, yes, but it works by itself, too.

A Novel by Richard Dooling New York Times Notable Book of 2002 Read the first chapter of Bet Your Life at the New York Times site. Set in Omaha, Nebraska, the author’s hometown, Bet Your Life turns the death of Lenny Stillmach–a young insurance investigator, a scam buster who may have been a scam artist himself–into a sexy, techno-literary exploration of fraud, murder, and the mysteries of the human soul. Bet Your Life is an homage to James M. Cain–The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity–classic insurance-murder mysteries bound up with love stories. Review Excerpts For Bet Your Life “A Techno Update for a femme fatale and a fall guy,” Janet Maslin, Daily New York Times “This is the kind of book that keeps you reading all night.” Paul MacEnulty, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel “Nebraska noir . . .” Mark Costello, Sunday NYTimes Book Review “Humor, wit and suspense. Dooling’s Web-savvy characters are startlingly realistic: They shock, amuse, frustrate and refuse to behave. His descriptions are breathtaking and crystal-clear.” Marc Flores, USA Today