The Basque Hotel

Reno & Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1989. RARE unsigned!! copy of the first printing. Fine condition in a Near Fine dust jacket. The jacket has only a tiny bit of very light shelfwear. NO chips, tears or fading. Sharp corners. Square and reasonably tight. NO owner's name or bookplate. NOT a remainder. NOT a library discard. Pages are clean and unmarked. 1989. First printing of the First Edition with complete number row (987654321) on the copyright page. The author's 8th book. Bound in the original light blue cloth, stamped in black. From the dust jacket: "The time is the 1930s and the setting is a western frontier town of a few thousand people, with one dubious distinction. Carson City, Nevada, is the smallest capital in the United States. Pete's world is circumscribed by Main Street - shops and stores, a pool hall, boarding-house hotels, and a capitol whose main contribution is as a place of liquid shade and precious green grass in blistering summers. By far the most important event of the day is when the steam whistle of the V & T sounds, signaling thee passage of the shortline railway on its journey from Virginia City to Reno, 'that impossibly big town of 20,000 people 30 miles away.' Pete's immigrant parents run the Basque Hotel, bed and meals, whiskey and wine in Prohibition time for sheepherders and town characters. Pete is indifferent to his heritage except for disquiet about his parents' ignorance of such American traditions as Christmas trees. The heroes that figure in the boy Pete's growing up consist of a motley collection as delightful as the reader will ever meet: Buckshot Dooney, the town drunk who 'travels from trouble to trouble'; Hallelujah Bob, who pursues his demons with a shotgun when he has imbibed too much; Irish prospector Mickey McCluskey; Mizoo, the cowboy with a ten-gallon hat; Pansy Gifford, the handyman who always wears a suit with a flower in his lapel; and George Washington Lopez, who swamps out the local whorehouse a block away from the capitol. Pete, too prone to dreams, undergoes his rites of passage - cruelty and kindness, disillusionment, love and terror, pathos and hilarious adventure, and finally, a cautious understanding of his world.". First Printing of the First Edition. Hardcover. Fine condition/Near Fine dust jacket. Illus. by NOT a library discard. 8vo. (ix), 124pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.