Author, Army veteran inspired by Willie Nelson

As a boy growing up in Texas, Odie Lindsey listened to Willie Nelson’s 1975 album “Red Headed Stranger” over and over. Forty years and one deployment to the Middle East later, as Lindsey worked on his first book, the short story collection “We Come to Our Senses,” he realized that he owed a debt to Nelson’s classic concept record.

"Looking back, the narrative structure (of the book) comes from knowing every word of that album," Lindsey said in between bites of a cheeseburger at his neighborhood dive bar. "Though 'Red Headed Stranger' moves forward on the whole, it's not strictly linear. Themes, characters (and) images cycle back, or refrain, just as real-world memory cycles back. There are tangential narrators ... their stories enact a comprehensive whole ... it's a composite, yet unified."

"We Come to Our Senses," a raw, intense exploration of the lives of Southern veterans trying to adapt to life at home, doesn't officially come out until July 26, but Thursday night, Lindsey, a Desert Storm veteran who has called Nashville home off and on since the 1990s, will read excerpts from it at Parnassus Books.

He began working on the project in the early 2000s as U.S. troops were being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. "I was seeing another generation go to the same place, sent there by a president with the same name," Lindsey remembered. "They don't know the sustained impact of deployment. That was a space I could explore: 'War is hell' brought home."

Lindsey's stories tend to focus on people who are often overlooked. "As mindfully as I can, I try to explore stories that are less available," he explains. "When I came home, it was like people thought I was more of a man. But what happens when a female soldier comes home? Where does it leave people who don't fit in?"

"We Come to Our Senses" begins with "Evie M.," a piece that was included in the Best American Short Stories anthology of 2014. The story's protagonist struggles with her mundane office job in between obsessing over the suicide notes she is writing. "After being dialed-in and operating at such a high ability (while deployed), to come home and not be able to execute a task properly is excruciating," Lindsey explains. "Just because you're not dodging roadside bombs anymore, it doesn't mean it's not difficult for some vets."

If you go

Author event with Odie Lindsey, 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Parnassus Books (3900 Hillsboro Pike, Suite 14). This event is free.