When it All Went to Hell: Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692643488)

Full of disorientation and disillusion, revelation and redemption, loneliness and hope, When It All Went To Hell is a collection that will take you from the smallest of small town America to the far reaches of Africa and back again. These tales are inhabited by unpredictably real and absurdly honest characters that explore the complexities and simplicities of love and relationships, question what you learn when you step outside of your own culture and into another, and travel far, far down the extremes of (ir)rational thinking. And of course we will need the allegorical blast on religion that all starts with a scruffy and most untrustworthy raccoon named Fred.

Pappas has created a compelling and hilarious world of different voices, settings and characters, grown from his own wild style imagination, rooted deep in his days as a line cook in the bowels of the kitchen, as a hard travelin' globe trottin' tramp, and sketch comedian king bullshitter of bullshitters with a keen eye for the rich details. With this collection we see a young writer actively seeking, participating full-on in his own life, reporting back to us what he finds, and, slowly but surely -- discovering his own permanent truth in letters.