Dave Matthes

The Mire Man Dave Matthes

Arlo Smith is a professionally diagnosed bi-polar, pathological stretcher of truths, satyromaniacal, drug-addicted alcoholic. He may even be a murderer. Above all that, he once met a woman... ...who drove him down a path of chaos to the absolute breaking point of his own sanity. Arlo Smith is THE MIRE MAN, a man who spends his days perpetually soaked in whiskey, vomit, his own urine, or all of the above. His is a story, in part, about a man who finds peace in solitude filled with drinking, drugs, music, and the occasional, if not obscene, companionship of women. He is a man living in self-imposed exile in the living space above a bar somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.... "peacefully", until he meets Constance: a piano-playing wanderer of the lands. Confused by the sudden magnetism of her presence, her company inevitably inspires Arlo's so-called stable lifestyle to spin wildly out of control with no hope of putting itself back together again. And so Arlo Smith, after meeting the nomadic woman Constance, is brought to the edge of the map; forced to embark on a quest that will tear apart everything from his current psychosis, taking him all the way back to a death and tragedy-filled childhood where his horrors began, and finally bringing him full circle into a dark, barren future filled with the inevitable bitter-sweetness that most every soul-searching quests end with; a journey that begins with innocence and ends with the highest, and deepest of self-confrontations."The Mire Man: The Complete Trilogy" is a single-volume epic comprised of all three chapters in "The Mire Man" trilogy: "Bar Nights", "Paradise City", and "Return to the Madlands", combined together in one seamless edition with no breaks in between the three books that can be read as an entire, uninterrupted adventure of the soul. Including small tidbits of reworked material and additional story content, this edition of "The Mire Man" is truly the best way to read the story of Arlo Smith.