The Ben Harper Stories

By the time Ben Harper turns thirty, he is sick to death of living in rented apartments. He wants a little piece of the rock that he can call his own. But he can hardly afford to pay his current monthly rent, and the only way he can swing a deal is to purchase a low-grade triplex and use rental income to cover two thirds of the mortgage. Shortly after signing the paperwork, Ben's world starts turning upside down as unstoppable forces encounter immovable objects with disturbing regularity and sometimes devastating effect for the next twenty-years. These stories chronicle the around-the-house adventures of a modern-day Everyman (mid-1980s to early 2000s) and feature a cast of rascals and misfits who can always be counted on to make a bad situation worse. Over the years, Ben steadily cultivates and refines a unique absurdist perspective on life while struggling to maintain his sense of justice and decency in the rough-and-tumble backstreets of America’s New World Order. These stories are presented in chronological order, but they may be read in any random fashion without losing much of the overall nonsensical effect.