Face Maker

A collection of dark fiction by Joe Ponepinto. These are stories about madness and obsession in men ranging from a guilt-ridden artist who designs faces for soldiers disfigured in World War I, to a boxing manager who lusts after his comatose fighter's wife, to a dying millionaire plotting the ultimate revenge against the man who stole his wife decades before. Each story explores the depths to which people allow themselves to fall. Five of the eight stories have appeared in literary journals in the US and abroad. The collection includes a special author's section, with notes about the genesis and meaning of each story. In stories that range effortlessly across time period and place, Joe Ponepinto delivers the kind of masculine character we crave in literary fiction; these characters wrestle with the most essential questions of morality, and they bare-knuckle box with their human frailties. If the characters’ decisions are disastrous, they are passionately made. If their fates are tragic, their efforts are heroic. Ponepinto is unafraid to follow human nature to its final conclusions, no matter how difficult those conclusions may be. – Kelly Davio, Author of Burn This House