"In these spare narratives, Jeff Bender portrays a life filled with sexual missteps. Male readers will either quickly identify with the narrator or perhaps go green with envy. The raw prose of these stories enhances their impact, suggesting rich experience without a hint of moralizing." - Geof Hewitt, The Perfect Heart: Selected Poems "The narrative voice in Jeff Bender's Road Work has powerful simplicity in delivering the message that hard lessons are hard learned. With unveiled honesty and innocent insouciance, Bender shows us in these stories that painfully realistic detail can paint experiences of wonder tinged with the cruelty of youthful curiosity. It's as if Holden Caulfield and Richard Ford got together over a few beers and talked into the night, a night worth staying up for." - Luella Bryant, While In Darkness There Is Light