Micah Thorp

“Don Karlsson, a logger, is first introduced to readers raising his middle finger to a crew of firefighters. Don, who “spent most of his childhood doing precisely whatever he was told not to do,” became more responsible after marrying and having three children, but his anti-authority streak remains. Whether they be firefighters, a professor in search of a new species, or the local sheriff, Don treats everyone who steps foot on his property with suspicion, expressing his feelings in a sporadic Faulkner-lite internal monologue: “That’s when I see them lawmen for the first time. Serious lookin’ fellas. When one shows up, he’s here for a talk. When it’s more than one, it’s certain they’re takin’ someone with ‘em with they leave.” When a new species of vole is discovered on his property, Don is prevented from cutting down any of the trees that he’s planted there throughout his life. To gain back his freedom (as he sees it), Don calls on his three adult children, all with differing opinions on his best course of action. What follows turns into a legal thriller, with informants and major revelations in trial scenes…

The prose is often beautiful: “The house with its tin roof and clapboard siding, dirty and decaying, is the remnant of a dream, an embodiment of one man’s struggle to find a place in the world, a tiny corner of the great globe he could once and forever call his own.”

A surprising and moving account of a man’s connection to his home.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Micah Thorp crafts a hard-hitting saga rooted in a sense of Oregon community. Readers exposed to these events will find any preconceptions of Oregon’s small towns and residents shaken as elder Don Karlsson’s future, and fights to protect the land, emerge within and outside of family… Packed with encounters that emerge from the force of divergent opinions, Aegolius Creek is a powerful story that will appeal beyond Oregon’s borders.”— D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

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Uncle Joe’s Muse

The members of Uncle Joe’s Band have spent years playing any venue that will pay for their unintelligible metal band performances while their rock and roll lifestyle has left them with bad livers, multiple divorces, and living in a squalid house in Vallejo, California.

Then one morning everything changes when an assertive twelve-year-old girl named Allison appears on their front porch and announces that she has been sent to stay with her father for the summer.

Meanwhile, years ago, the band’s namesake and inspiration, Uncle Joe, takes a long strange trip as a vagabond hippie through the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s that includes brushes with Ken Kesey’s bus, Watergate, the Pet Rock, Iran Contra, and Jerry Garcia.

Inspired by their experience with Allison and their budding paternal instincts, recollections of Uncle Joe, and a well-played Stratocaster with the initials “JG”, the members of Uncle Joe’s Band begin to play a new tune in a major key.

Uncle Joe’s Senpai

Instead of playing in rundown bars, Uncle Joe’s Band now sell out concert halls.

Prior to a tour in Japan, a letter arrives claiming one of the band members, Ian, is the father of an unnamed young woman, who coincidentally is the member of another band, Stygian Teal. In the hopes of identifying Ian’s daughter, Uncle Joe’s Band attends a Stygian Teal concert. Much to their surprise, they find not one, but four Stygian Teal band members, any of which could be Ian’s daughter.

Meanwhile, as the band’s namesake Uncle Joe, an aged deadhead, makes his way across North America during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, another Uncle Jo, Joji Kinsara, makes his way across the Japanese archipelago. Everywhere he goes, Joji leaves large painted haiku poems, which become noted works of art. In his travels Joji visits the Nagano Winter Olympics, starts an environmental revitalization of Mt. Fuji, and helps ensure that a young Masako Owada becomes a future empress.

As they journey through Japan, Uncle Joe’s Band attempts to discern which young woman is Ian’s daughter, how to deal with newfound fame, and what it takes to formulate a family.