Table of Contents

Introduction by Conor McPherson

AGES OF THE MOON
EVANESCENCE, OR SHAKESPEARE IN THE ALLEY
SHORT LIFE OF TROUBLE
THE UNSEEN HAND
ROCK GARDEN
CHICAGO
ICARUS’S MOTHER
4- H CLUB
FOURTEEN HUNDRED THOUSAND
RED CROSS
COWBOYS #2
FORENSIC & THE NAVIGATORS
HOLY GHOSTLY
BACK BOG BEAST BAIT
KILLER’S HEAD

About the Author

SAM SHEPARDwas the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than fifty-five plays, three story collections, and two works of prose fiction. As an actor, he appeared in more than sixty films, and received an Oscar nomination in 1984 forThe Right Stuff.He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collectionGreat Dream of Heaven.In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He died in 2017.

Reviews

“The greatest American playwright of his generation…the most inventive in language and revolutionary in craft…the writer whose work most accurately maps the interior and exterior landscapes of his society.” —New York Magazine

“Stunning in their originality, defiant and inscrutable.” —Esquire

“With the exception of David Mamet, no American playwright of his generation matches Mr. Shepard in the creation of characters that are immediately so accessible and so mysterious.” —The New York Times
 
“One of our best and most challenging playwrights. . . . His plays are a form of exorcism: magical, sometimes surreal rituals that grapple with the demonic forces in the American landscape.” —Newsweek
 
“One of the most original, prolific and gifted dramatists at work today.” —The New Yorker
 
“Sam Shepard fulfills the role of professional playwright as a good ballet dancer or acrobat fulfills his role in performance. . . . He always delivers, he executes feats of dexterity and technical difficulty that an untrained person could not, and makes them seem easy.” —The Village Voice
 
“The major talent of his generation. . . . An original, a major force. . . . [Shepard] is a poet of the theater, shaping a new language out of broken words: an emotional seismograph registering the tremors which shake the substratum of human life.” —The Times (London)