The Bridge on Beer River
Terry Tierney
THE BRIDGE ON BEER RIVER follows the ups-and-downs in the life of ex-Marine Curt, back from his service and trying to stay afloat in a rust belt city in decline. Binghamton is a struggling town full of struggling inhabitants, and here the Reagan economy has taken its toll. Curt lives paycheck to paycheck, working construction until he gets a job operating a forklift in a local dairy. At night, he hangs out at his local watering hole, My Mother’s Place, bonding with his blue-collar buddies over too many pitchers of local Genesee Ale and nurturing an unhealthy infatuation with one of the waitresses.What a way to see life. Terry Tierney has written a novel entitled ‘The Bridge on Beer River’. This is a story of a man named Curt, who is a skilled forklift driver for a local dairy company during the era of President 
Ronald Reagan, who feels stuck both professionally and personally. Curt wants to improve himself, but he has a lot to learn both academically and personally. To start with he needs to look at his various relationships with friends and other workers, and he will see what he needs to do for a more ‘perfect’ living. Terry Tierney has verbally created a novel that describes the Reagan era economics with all the descriptions of the town’s locations as well as as the other characters of the story. Terry uses the language of the 1980s conservatively. The cover art of ‘The Bridge on Beer River’ reminds me of the area that I grew up in during this time of the ‘economically depressed’. Curt, the main character, is a helper but he has to find out and figure a way to do this. In conceiving of the cover and the artwork the uses of grays and blacks . The bridge that sits over a homeless site will elicit memories for readers who did live at this time in history as a child, teen, or adult that could also be of today in many ways.
A rust belt city in decline retains the solace of romance. Which often proves to be an empty promise or even a curse. With a wry perspective and unflappable determination, Curt embodies all the town’s ills, including his problems with drinking, work, and relationships, as he tries to save himself and rescue his friends in his own unconventional and unlawful ways. In The Bridge on Beer River, a novel-in-stories set in Reagan-era Binghamton, New York, characters scramble for subsistence while hoping for love and a better life.
2023ISBN: 978-1-956692-63-1http://www.unsolictedpress.comUnsolicited Press333 pages
About the Author
Terry Tierney was born in South Dakota and raised in Minneapolis and Cleveland. After serving in the Seabees, he received a BA and MA in English from SUNY Binghamton, and a PhD in Victorian Literature from Emory University. He taught college composition and creative writing and later survived a series of Silicon Valley startups as a software engineering manager. His stories and poems have appeared in over seventy literary journals, including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dreams, Rust + Moth, Typishly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Lake, Third Wednesday, Puerto del Sol, and Poetry Northwest. He is the author of the Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry collection, The Poet’s Garage, and the novel Lucky Ride. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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