Steven Ostrowski

Complex family dynamics, the kinds of things that can go seriously wrong on long road trips, and, ultimately, forgiveness and love, are at the heart of Highway of Spirit and Bone, the debut novel of former professor and poet Steven Ostowski. David reluctantly agrees to drive his mother, Lilly, from her longtime home on Staten Island to Flagstaff, Arizona. He leaves his wife and children behind, along with a sense of unease about a new neighbor, who seems to be spending too much time at his home since he hit the road. Jeanette, Lilly's youngest daughter, joins them, even though she and David tend to bicker a lot, and apparently have major challenges from their past that they bring with them. In addition, Jeanette has recently broken off a relationship with Sherry, a former police officer. A distraught Sherry takes to the road too, desperate to reconcile with Jeanette. Their poet brother, Aaron, awaits in Las Vegas, with secrets and unresolved issues with both David and Jeanette. Lilly insists on a detour before they reach Flagstaff. Along the highways of America, David, Lilly and Jeanette encounter people and situations that are sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, and sometimes dangerous. Each provides insights into that most complex of relationships and challenges of the journeying soul.

This collection of fictions, written in a variety of forms from traditional stories to micro fictions, explore the often hardscrabble, working-class lives of compelling, quirky characters.

In calling this book Beyond the Culture Tours, the authors bring the reader's attention to a set of issues in the teaching of literature and culture. The Culture Tour is an old concept in the West, dating back to the seventeenth century. The educated young man -- it was an exclusively male project at first -- was expected to round off his education with the Grand Tour. This meant a visit to the major sites on the European continent, particularly Greece and Rome, and occasionally to the Holy Land. The object was to have a first-hand view of these monuments, and looking at them alone brought people the name of being cultured or well-traveled. As the idea spread in the early part of the twentieth century, it allowed for the vicarious tour rather than the actual one. Students were asked to look at collections of art or reproductions of art work, listen to concerts or later recordings, and to read certain classical works drawn from what has come to be known as "the canon." The point of this form of education was that exposure to these works in itself formed a version of the Grand Tour. The basic idea behind the tour approach is that exposure to a culture in books is like travel to an ethnic theme park. This volume looks beyond the tour approach and reports on the results of a four-year project undertaken by a research team from the National Center for Research in the Learning and Teaching of Literature. Their intent was to study the teaching and impact of multicultural literature. The team examined how students approached texts that either came from their culture or from another, and how teachers perceived the students, the literature, and their role. This volume details various aspects of their findings.

In calling this book Beyond the Culture Tours, the authors bring the reader's attention to a set of issues in the teaching of literature and culture. The Culture Tour is an old concept in the West, dating back to the seventeenth century. The educated young man -- it was an exclusively male project at first -- was expected to round off his education with the Grand Tour. This meant a visit to the major sites on the European continent, particularly Greece and Rome, and occasionally to the Holy Land. The object was to have a first-hand view of these monuments, and looking at them alone brought people the name of being cultured or well-traveled. As the idea spread in the early part of the twentieth century, it allowed for the vicarious tour rather than the actual one. Students were asked to look at collections of art or reproductions of art work, listen to concerts or later recordings, and to read certain classical works drawn from what has come to be known as "the canon." The point of this form of education was that exposure to these works in itself formed a version of the Grand Tour. The basic idea behind the tour approach is that exposure to a culture in books is like travel to an ethnic theme park. This volume looks beyond the tour approach and reports on the results of a four-year project undertaken by a research team from the National Center for Research in the Learning and Teaching of Literature. Their intent was to study the teaching and impact of multicultural literature. The team examined how students approached texts that either came from their culture or from another, and how teachers perceived the students, the literature, and their role. This volume details various aspects of their findings.