02426cam a2200361 i 4500 1635855299 TxAuBib 20241002120000.0 231204s2024||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2023054988 9781538740989 hardcover 1538740982 hardcover (OCoLC)1401906372 TxAuBib rda Thomas, Joseph Earl, author. God bless you, Otis Spunkmeyer / Joseph Earl Thomas. First edition. New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2024. 229 pages ; 22 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier "After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility. Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day Black life--of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics"-- Provided by publisher. 20241002. Iraq War, 2003-2011 Veterans Fiction. Fathers and sons Fiction. Single fathers Fiction. Veterans Fiction. Emergency medical services Fiction. African Americans Fiction. City and town life Fiction. TXKIP