bang BANG is author Lynn Hoffman’s imag­i­na­tive tirade against America’s love affair with guns. The unlike­ly hero­ine is Paula, a young waitress/​singer, who while out for a hap­py evening with her best friend, stands help­less­ly by as he is gunned down dur­ing a street rob­bery. After Tom’s untime­ly death, Paula is drained of her zest for life, mov­ing through the days in the slow motion of a crip­pling depres­sion. Her life is saved by the most unlike­ly of folks, a pro-gun sen­a­tor who twists her words of grief into a mes­sage for his re-elec­tion cam­paign and a gun orga­ni­za­tion that grabs her image and mis­quote from the sen­a­tor for their own ad campaign. 

Paula is zapped back to life by her out­rage. She pur­chas­es an air gun and becomes a real life super hero, shat­ter­ing those wind­shields bear­ing the gun organization’s decal. As her escapades reach the air­waves, they inspire a pow­er­ful nation­al anti-gun movement. 

bang BANG is a grit­ty mod­ern day fairy tale where the urban princess has the pow­er and the men in her life pro­vide back up sup­port. It’s a vibrant and unex­pect­ed mix of prose, poet­ry, and screen­play and quite an inter­est­ing read.