In A Man's Traveled Heart, first-time author Micah Park Biffle presents forty-one imaginative short stories spanning time, space, and genre.
Many of the stories revolve around realistic, everyday struggles and feature vulnerable protagonists dealing with love and loss or traumatic pasts. Other stories delve into fantasy and explore topics such as enchanted libraries, lonely flowers, madness, and magic. Biffle writes from a number of perspectives, ranging from a child's, to a flower's, to a drunken man's, and often reveals astonishingly intricate details about his characters' inner lives.
Technically speaking, many of the works in A Man's Traveled Heart belong to the category of sudden fiction and are therefore quite short-under 750 words. Some are only a page long and focus on one meaningful moment. Others are woven together to make a larger thematic narrative or include characters from earlier stories. Tantalizingly, some of the stories include hidden messages that the author has deliberately planted for astute readers to unearth.
Biffle's stories don't promise happy endings. Instead, their conclusions will force you to think about the larger mysteries of the human condition and the world around us.
About the Author: Micah Park Biffle has always loved stories and storytelling. During his childhood and teenage years in Snohomish, Washington, he often disappeared into fantasy worlds in his favorite video games and his imagination.
After completing high school, Biffle joined the US Army. He spent four years in the infantry and served in Iraq for twelve months. His experiences during wartime made it hard for him to transition back to civilian life. He lost his purpose in life for a time and struggled with alcoholism. After Biffle began writing again, however, his mental health and outlook on life improved. He is now extremely aware of the amazing power of words.
Biffle has recommitted to getting a college education at the University of Washington Bothell. After he graduates in 2017, he plans to devote his life to writing.
