Robert Olen Butler has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors. The most-rated is Perfume River.
Verb
Summary
Fiction, poetry, and music come together to create something new: Verb. Original stories and poems you won't find anywhere else, by the best writers in the country, brought to you in an innovative format. Verb is the ancient oral tradition and the venerable literary magazine combined into a fresh new package: the audioquarterly. Our inaugural issue features many of the top writers in the country. We're proud to include a 13,000 word excerpt from an unpublished novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler and a new recording of the seldom-seen story "In Broad Daylight", by National Book Award-winner Ha Jin. The issue also features an unreleased recording from the late James Dickey, and a new short story from Edgar-winner Tom Franklin. We have the great writer and poet Stuart Dybek making his singing debut and new poetry from Thomas Lux, one of the best poets in the country. Finally, we round it off with six new poems from South Carolina's Poet Laureate, Marjory Wentworth. All of that wrapped up with a ghost from the 19th century, Walt Whitman.
©2005 Verb Productions, LLC
A Small Hotel
Summary
Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hayes, who have decided to separate after 20 years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives to New Orleans and checks into the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some 20 years earlier and where she must now make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their 19-year-old daughter. Butler masterfully weaves scenes of the present with memories from both Michael and Kelly, showing two people deeply in love but struggling with their own inabilities to express this love.
©2011 Robert Olen Butler (P)2011 Dreamscape Media, LLC
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Summary
Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 1993 Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. This edition includes two subsequently published stories - "Salem" and "Missing" - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey with a return to the jungles of Vietnam.
©1992 Robert Olen Butler (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Perfume River
Summary
Robert Quinlan is a 70-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam War protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert's own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified. Robert and Jimmy's father, a veteran of WWII, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across their lives once again when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father's bedside. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.
©2016 Robert Olen Butler (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books