The eight tales comprising OPEN HOUSE work progressively from the eponymous first to the penultimate and concluding ones, from a child's viewpoint to a young man's and finally to a twice-divorced damaged ex-vet's reconciling with his dying ex-vet father. The thematic trifecta of home, family, and primal search for a distant and/or absent father too vague or shadowy to name on through to successive stages of the equally anonymous narrator's development are punctuated by the emotional, psychological, and physical metaphorical disconnects of war - love at all levels as the iconic postmodern battlefield. Painter-poet-professor-emeritus, Gordon has taken degrees in Philosophy and Languages & Literatures, been awarded Arts & Humanities Endowment Fellowships for poetry and fiction, teaching & scholarship recognitions, artist residencies, and presented discourse papers and readings at national & international conferences. Extensive creative and critical publications appear globally in juried journals. Gordon works in Asia and sits on the graduate faculty of a national university.