In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "A Good Seem from a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler examined America through the unusual perspective of the eyes of Vietnamese postwar immigrants. Now in his widely acclaimed "Had a Good Time, Butler rediscovers America using a fascinating kaleidoscope of postcards from a bygone era. For many years Robert Olen Butler has collected picture postcards from the early twentieth century--not so much for the pictures on the fronts but for the messages written on the backs, little bits of the captured souls of pople long since passed away. Using these brief messages of real people from another age. Butler creates fully imagined stories that speak to the universal human condition. In "Up by Heart," a Tennessee miner is called upon to become a preacher, and then asked to complete an altogether more sinister task. In "The Ironworkers' Hayride," a young man named Milton embarks on a romantic adventure with a girl with a wooden leg. From the deeply moving "Carl and I," whre a young wife writes a postcard in reply to a card from her husband who is dying of tuberculosis, to the eerily familiar "The One in White." where a newspaper reporter covers an incident of American military adventurism in a foreign land, these are intimate and fascinating glimpses into the lives of ordinary people in an extraordinary age. Charged with sincerity, wit, and an eye into the stuff of human relationships. "Had a Good Time proves once again that Robert Olen Butler is "our preeminent practitioner of first-person narrative" ("Chicago Tribune).