New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (1997)

Meet the unlikely traveling troupe of The Last Great Snake Show: snake handler Jubal Lee, a southern son of the swamplands; exotic dancer and sometime Aunt Bea impersonator Gloria Peacock; cranky old soldier Clinton Tucker, otherwise known as Cappy. These three have resolved to deliver the ailing Miss Darlene, their employer at The House of Joy – a popular nightspot on the North Carolina coast until a recent tornado wiped it out – to retire to the property on the Oregon coast she bought years ago sight unseen. With each step along their winding route, these innocents from a region of the country they have come to believe rife with intolerance face perversions and prejudices they never encountered at home. And with these confrontations, demons from the past come forward in a new light, and the need to escape heritage is balanced by the desire to defend it. The travelers are each called to give something of themselves and each must finally determine whether, and at what price, one sells one’s soul.

New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (1995)

In this moving and provocative novel of sorrow and laughter, anger and redemption, two men who have led very different lives, one white, one black, both touched by fire, are drawn inexorably to one another. When they finally come together in a Seattle park where the homeless gather, they begin to compare lives and losses, learn to lean on one another, and begin to try to make sense of existence.