A FRESH NEW VOICE OFFERS TALES THAT
DIG DEEP INTO THE HUMAN HEART

The ten stories in Terry Bennett's debut collection introduce us to men and women whose lives have reached turning points they can't ignore. Meet Paul, whose searing and inexplicable connection to a tragic plane crash leads to an epiphany. Meet Elita, a woman on the rebound from a breakup who takes a chance with a blind photographer and finds herself finally facing the truths from which she's been hiding. Meet Tommy Lee, a song writer turned grief counselor, shattered by the death of his brother and trying to come to terms with how and why it happened. Then there's William, a shy savant who wields the I-Ching to avoid a broken heart, and Cindy, a young woman who declares her love for an ungrateful boyfriend with a daring tattoo. Blake is a teacher turned editor who must pay his gambling debts by tutoring the son of a loan shark; is this a final trap he can't escape, or is it freedom? Discover a professor testing his rejected doctoral thesis through an encounter of the flesh in Tahiti. Watch a veteran trainer in Los Angeles as he struggles to save a proud but declining boxer.

These characters and their stories will strike a chord with readers by illuminating the choices many of us face in our own lives. In ANTIOXIDANTS AND OTHER STORIES (Toby Press, October 1, '04, $19.95), Bennett displays an exceptional eye and voice for the very human foibles in all of us.

Terry Bennett is a California native who attended UC Santa Barbara to study art before leaving for Alaska to work as a commercial fisherman. He later returned to California and fought forest fires while serving as a mountain rescue team member. Bennett has worked as a trade magazine editor and as a copywriter. During the 1990s, he won five Persephone awards at the William Saroyan Writer's Conference. "Antioxidants," the short story that opens this collection, was originally published in the Red Rock Review. Bennett lives in Sacramento, California.