{"product_id":"balloon-theater-short-stories-and-personal-essays","title":"Balloon Theater: Short Stories and Personal Essays","description":"In many parts of the world, a theater that features puppet shows is known as a balloon theater. The title of this collection invokes an image of puppets under the control of a master. Each of these thirty stories and essays presents an immaculately described, fully inhabited world of authentic characters crossing class and cultural strictures to resist the forces that would control them. A failed musician travels to Russia seeking a wife and rediscovers his inspiration. A SCUBA diver remembers how to see. Two men, one successful, one a failure, meet in a mall and reawaken their long-past rivalry. A cocky high school student who is humiliated in a classroom peer-pressure experiment finds grace and forgiveness. A tough but well-adjusted kid finds poignancy in the home life of a classmate who is neither tough nor well-adjusted. An expatriate teacher who has left his family to engage his true self is unsettled by a cancer diagnosis. A writer in his “last few inches” of life engages his dreadful circumstance with lyrical clarity.\n\nIn Balloon Theater, Steve Moncada Street explores the misunderstandings, satisfactions, self-deceptions, betrayals, and eventual (if tentative) understandings of well-intending people trying to discover their own particular frequencies.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 1958015067\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: BVV.1958015067.VG\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Very Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Street, Steve Moncada\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: Book has little sign of wear or use  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43088301719613,"sku":"BVV.1958015067.VG","price":13.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/1958015067-0.jpg?v=1775511240","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/balloon-theater-short-stories-and-personal-essays","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}