DRESS WHITES
AND OTHER STORIES
The new book from John Phillips
“Evocatively and poignantly written, Dress Whites recreates slices of life in America as it was a half century ago.”
- Thomas Hauser, author of Missing and
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times
About Dress Whites
A powerful collection of short stories from a tumultuous time in America's history that forever changed our nation.
A freshly made Marine Corps officer, with his new bride in tow, visits his family one last time before shipping out to Vietnam. A group of lost souls living in a seedy Las Vegas motel find solace in each other, only to be devastated when one of them is unable to escape his demons. A teenager tries to convince his mother that his Amerasian girlfriend is worthy of the American Dream. A boxer returns from the war and takes a desperate fight to try to make a name for himself and enough money to look for his daughter. A brother left behind seeks his own random, brutal revenge.
They are some of the characters of Dress Whites, a debut short-story collection by John Phillips, whose powerful fiction has been described as both "muscular" and "sensitive."
They are the stories of people who have been left behind in the years during and after the Vietnam War. Whether they served or remained at home, they are haunted years later by the far-off war that many of them still struggle to recover from today.
DRESS WHITES
AND OTHER STORIES
Praise for Dress Whites
“John Phillips’s debut collection of short stories, Dress Whites, was worth the wait. Not since Hemingway’s ‘Twenty Grand’ and Algren’s ‘A Bottle of Milk for Mother’ have I realized how much power the mastery of a short story gives us. With Phillips it is the people—a woman becomes a war widow at age 23, a returning Vietnam vet turns to the brutal world of boxing to fund the search for his missing daughter left behind in Vietnam, the occupants of a run-down Vegas hotel battle their private demons. It’s not fancy. It’s not pretty. It’s a journey through the dark end of real life, where people battle for a second chance. It makes you want more.”
- Jerry Izenberg, columnist emeritus
“Beneath the nostalgic memories of lava lamps and tie dye of the 1960s was a grittier era unfolding in the blue-collar bars of Staten Island, the swamplands of the south and the jungles of Vietnam. John Phillips’ new book Dress Whites is a cinematic collection of fascinating interlocking stories told in the styles of Quentin Tarantino and Raymond Chandler. It’s a new, must-read look at how the Vietnam era shaped the lives of those who served and those left behind.”
- Jody Heaps, TV producer, writer; five-time Emmy winner
About John Phillips
John Phillips has had several lives: among them bartender, beauty products salesman, union representative, sports writer. Running a bar was the best and worst of times. (Think sending a guy back to jail for burglary and having to pay off cops to ensure they’d be there when needed.) Of course, there were barroom dramas - good, bad and just weird. All of it while trying to look the other way as Staten Island gave up guys to die in Vietnam and dancing as fast as he could to not be one of them.
As a sportswriter for Reuters, Phillips covered more than 60 world title fights and their scenes filled with a wonderland of characters - many tough, decent and funny, others cold-eyed predators, always, always on the hustle. Among other events he covered were the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, figure skating, tennis, and horse racing. He also reported from Cuba, where he spent three days in a hospital because he was dumb enough to drink unfiltered water at the airport.
Odds & Ends
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Contact
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