That is definitely the question I get the most about the book- BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE.
My brother Chris did a painting many years ago (see above) that depicted three young fellows passed-out on a couch in an apartment on the Monongahela River in Morgantown, WV after a two-day binge of different intoxicants.
Chris was with my other brother Jeff, and they snapped a Polaroid photo of their three drunken and slumbering friends.
Before the guys passed out, food was ordered from a local Chinese restaurant for delivery. After the food arrived, my two brothers went into the kitchen of the strange apartment in search of forks and spoons so they could eat.
They opened the silverware drawer. It was filled with nothing but bullets of many different sizes. They searched through all the drawers in the kitchen. They all were filled with bullets. There wasn’t a single fork or spoon in the entire apartment.
Chris was enrolled in art school at West Virginia University at the time and did the painting of the photograph and named it “BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE”.
As a young pharmacist in rural West Virginia, I witnessed and experienced some wild and hard-to-believe events, some very similar to the scene depicted in the painting by my brother.
During that time, I saw how prescription drug abuse could tear a small community apart where opportunities for legitimate employment and to improve one’s life were few.
Sometime around 2012, I began putting those experiences onto paper in the form of a fictious novel and completed it a few years later. I named the book “BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE”. When the book was finally published in May 2020 by PUMP FAKE PRESS, the painting was to be used for the cover. Because of size limitations, only one of the three passed out young men made the cut for the final cover of the book (see below).
BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE is available for purchase at http://www.jimantonini.com
Jim Antonini; 02/04/2023
