Ephraim’s Ark

The U.S. Government begins to test the Atom Bomb in the Southern Nevada desert. Ten-year-old Ephraim Olsen wants to leave his home town of Divine Massacres, barely forty miles away. Even if it means gathering two of every kind of pet and desert fauna into the old V-2 rocket that adorns the Blast-Off Gas Station, he's determined to escape to Mars. Ephraim's Ark is a fable of a time when American popular culture embraced the Atom Bomb. Pre-Cold War. Pre-Cancer from radiation.

Included are two short stories of the blue-collar residents of that distinct stretch of desert. No Gamblers. No gangsters. No Vegas Strip. Just a compromised vision of the American Dream in the shadow of the City of Sin.