Leave the Troubled Skull Behind

In Leave the Troubled Skull Behind, Lina Patton crafts a haunting, darkly funny pastiche inspired by Tobias Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain and true stories from the life of her father, audiobook narrator James Baxter Patton. When Baxter, a sharp-tongued, tech-weary octogenarian, finds himself in the middle of a surreal bank robbery, his final moments become a kaleidoscope of memory, irony, and revelation.

As the bullet slows through his brain, Baxter doesn’t recall his career, his family, or the world’s unraveling headlines. Instead, he returns to a racetrack in childhood—blue sky, horse hooves, and the fleeting magic of feeling the universe on his side.