Fiction. HARD HED is a contemporary retelling of the Johnny Appleseed story. Hoosier Chapman, local historian and apple orchardist, has just been released from a Northwestern Ohio jail after serving two years for planting wild apple trees in a city park. Dropped at the state line by a deputy sheriff, Hoosier treks west, overland and barefoot into Indiana state, recreating history and inventing myth, both public and private, along the way. Ranging in style from realism to fantasy to historical document to speculative fiction to lyric poetry, there is a joy of craft that shows through page after page. HARD HEN is part meta-story, part documentary, and part violent romance. It is an unabashedly original work of fiction that roams in and out of time and place and point of view. Tidler has created an Indiana as Faulkner created a Mississippi and Steinbeck a California.

Author City: VICTORIA, BC CAN

Charles Tidler is an award-winning playwright, poet, novelist and spoken jazz artist. His plays Blind Dancers and Straight Ahead have been produced in Canada, the US, and London. Other plays include The Butcher's Apron, Red Mango: A Blues, and Tortoise Boy: A Chamber Play. He is of the author of the poetry collection, Straw Things (Ekstasis Editions, 2008) and of the novel, Going to New Orleans (Anvil Press, 2004). Most recently, he is the author of HARD HED (Anvil Press, 2011). Charles was born in Ohio and grew up in Indiana. He studied literature and philosophy with William Gass and Barriss Mills at Purdue University, before moving permanently to the West Coast of Canada.

Reviews and Other Links
Quentin Mills-Fenn @ Uptown