Stephen J O'Shea

From the Land of Genesis Stephen J O'Shea

From the Land of Genesis is literature at it's best. Crafted in short story form to achieve a number of vivid slices of life, this collection accurately illustrates the hardships of normal life after living wartime experiences. O'Shea travelled the globe interviewing veterans and taking special care to authentically portray the veteran experience at home. The result is a literary fiction / narrative non-fiction hybrid, with fictional characters and settings, but references and experiences of war that are drawn explicitly from interviews, transcripts, and source materials.



Any one of these stories contributes so much on its own and is unique in its own respects, and yet the overlapping characters and themes flow more like a novel than a short story collection. O'Shea writes on a number of widely varying lifestyles of veterans who all carry the burden of war into their new lives, wherever they have ended up. He demonstrates expert control of conveying emotions, individually and interactively, which plays to his theme of depicting the reality of post-traumatic stress syndrome. To name a few, he emphasizes feelings of alienation, depression, paranoia, confusion, and regret. However, the stories also feature glimpses of hope amidst the despairing truths, making a beautiful literary medium for readers to experience vicariously the extremes of the human condition.