We’re back again with another author this Saturday night! This time Arthur Herbert, author of the book The Cuts that Cure is here to share with us a book, a movie, and a random wild card recommendation. You can read an excerpt from his novel here! Support bookstores by pre-ordering a copy on BookShop.org, or pre-order on Amazon. Make sure to add it to your reading list.
Take it away Arthur!
What is your Saturday night reading suggestion? You’ll notice a theme here. My all-time favorite author, Larry McMurtry, died last week. In the part of Texas where I grew up, if you’d never read Lonesome Dove, they’d raise your taxes. After my brother texted me that LM had just died, I felt like I ought to have been wearing a black armband to work. Since his death, I went back and re-read Horseman, Pass-By, the book that went on to become the movie Hud with Paul Newman. But if you haven’t read much or any McMurtry, I’d recommend starting with his classic The Last Picture Show. It’s not as daunting of an undertaking as Lonesome Dove, and it has the benefit of being hands-down the best depiction of the small-town Texas life in which I was raised that I’ve ever come across.
What is your Saturday night movie suggestion? Not many people know this, but McMurtry wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. Its theme of forbidden love is painful and powerful, and I’m told it’s one of the works of which McMurtry was proudest. While it’s set in Wyoming, the movie was shot in Alberta, and the scenery is like a third main character. My wife says that this is her desert island movie.
What is your Saturday night wild card recommendation? McMurtry’s son James is an acclaimed singer/songwriter, specializing in music about small-town Texas life. His most popular song is called “Choctaw Bingo.” It’s about a family reunion to be held at the property of his Uncle Slayton, an outlaw who’s transitioned from making moonshine to manufacturing crystal meth in the woods behind his trailer. It’s simply outstanding. Enjoy:
About the Book, The Cuts that Cure
Alex Brantley is a burned-out surgeon whose desperation to start a new life outside of medicine leads him to settle in a sleepy Texas town close to the Mexican border, a town that has a dark side. Its secrets and his own past catch up with him as traits he thought he’d buried in the deserts on the frontiers of the border rise up again to haunt him.
To the citizens of Three Rivers, Henry Wallis appears to be a normal Texas teenager: a lean, quiet kid from a good family whose life seems to center around running cross-country, his first girlfriend, and Friday night football. That Henry is a cultivated illusion, however, a disguise he wears to conceal his demons. Both meticulous and brutally cruel, he manages to hide his sadistic indulgences from the world, but with that success, his impulses grow stronger until one day when a vagrant is found murdered.
When Alex and Henry’s paths cross, it starts a domino effect which leads to mangled lives and chilling choices made in the shadows along la frontera, where everything is negotiable.
Support bookstores by pre-ordering a copy on BookShop.org, or pre-order on Amazon. Make sure to add it to your reading list.
About the Author, Arthur Herbert
Arthur Herbert was born and raised in small town Texas. He worked on offshore oil rigs, as a bartender, a landscaper at a trailer park, and as a social worker before going to medical school. He chose to do a residency in general surgery, followed by a fellowship in critical care and trauma surgery. For the last seventeen years, he’s worked as a trauma and burn surgeon, operating on all ages of injured patients. He continues to run a thriving practice.
His debut novel, The Cuts that Cure, will be published by White Bird Publishing in Austin Texas on May 11, 2021. He has begun work on his second novel. Arthur currently lives in New Orleans, with his wife Amy and their dogs. Arthur loves hearing from readers, so don’t hesitate to email him at arthur@arthurherbertwriter.com.
Visit his website at: https://arthurherbertwriter.com/
Good answers!