Harbingers by B.J. Hollars

Description

We’re constantly looking for clues of what comes next, in tarot cards and tea leaves, in augury and biography, too. But can we ever find our futures by such means? In three thematically linked essays, B.J. Hollars explores what harbingers might have been present in the lives of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer before he invented the atomic bomb and civil rights activist Medgar Evers before he was murdered. He also considers his own overlooked portents in a static-filled universe. Taken together, these stories converge toward the humbling truth that life’s only certainty is uncertainty, and our harbingers—no matter how strong—only offer insight in the aftermath.

“Harbingers by B.J. Hollars is a haunting meditation on mortality, loneliness, the atomic bomb, and the violence of racial history. In a self-deprecating plain style, the three discrete essays, “Harbingers,” “The Loneliness of Oppenheimer,” and “Fragments for Medgar,” loosely form a triptych, a whole greater than their parts. Weaving together segments of personal narrative, travelogue, and research-based journalism, a complicated and interactive experience for the reader is created. Hollars succeeds remarkably in bringing humor to his sobering subject while embodying the darkness that thrums beneath the surface of our mortal lives.”
—Marcia Aldrich, author of Companion to an Untold Story

“In B.J. Hollars’s Harbingers, dangers abound. There are diseases that may lurk inside your DNA, nuclear bombs, people who will murder you for standing by your right to equality. And yet, in each of these three essays, there are ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, extraordinary in their steadfast determination to find what is good in the world. To suffer. To fight for it, still. Hollars is a masterful weaver, bringing together meticulously researched facts alongside personal insight, a harbinger himself for the kind of thoughtfulness that just might help us all. I love these essays.”
—Tessa Fontaine, author of The Electric Woman

B. J. Hollars

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Wisconsin for Kennedy: The Primary That Launched a President and Changed The Course of History, Year of Plenty: A Family’s Season of Grief, Go West Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail, Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country, The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders, Flock Together: A Love Affair With Extinct Birds, From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human, as well as a collection of essays, This Is Only A Test. Additionally, he has also written Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America, Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa, Dispatches from the Drownings, and Sightings. He and his film partner, Steve Dayton, have also completed a documentary When Rubber Hit The Road.

Hollars is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the Council of Wisconsin Writers’ Blei-Derleth Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and received a 2022 silver medal from the Midwest Book Awards. His work has been featured on C-SPAN, Lit Hub, Washington Post, The Millions, and Wisconsin Life.
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He is the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and the Midwest Artist Academy, as well as a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and a columnist for The Leader-Telegram. He lives a simple existence with his family.