Edward Jay Harshman

Llata Ecalpon and The Unsolved Problem Edward Jay Harshman

Prepare to enter a dark world. Llata Ecalpon is too long for a short story and too short for a novel. It describes a senior college student's adventure in a mythical blue-collar town in which concrete thinking reigns supreme and college education is debunked. The Unsolved Problem is disliked by formal publishers partially because the tone of the text differs from its content. In the world of the urban destitute, the land of limited opportunity and of despair and death, two brothers, both mentally ill and homeless, rescue a paraplegic woman who is giving birth and later encounter the woman at a church. They start a foundation to help the unfortunate, converting hopelessness and depression to autonomy and confidence; but they later encounter an unexpected problem that they are powerless to solve.