Stories of low-paying gigs, accidental acid trips, nights at cheap motels, and love in dusky bars come alive in the pages of a new book by ISU author Debra Marquart.”The Hunger Bone” is, according to New York’s Kirkus Reviews, a collection of 22 “darkly tinted snapshots.” Marquart is an assistant professor of English and the lead singer of Ames-based band the Bone People.Marquart spent seven years in the late ’70s and early ’80s as a touring road musician with various rock and heavy metal bands.”When I came off the road in ’83, I’d had such horrible and spectacular experiences that I knew I had a story,” she says.Some of those horrible experiences include the time when all of her band’s equipment was destroyed in a fire, and another time when a musician friend died of a drug overdose.”The material in this book was really heavy and painful at times,” she says. “It was because that life is so hard. I really wanted to try to capture it. I wanted to be true to that experience … you really have to dive into bad feelings, kind of like actors do, in order to come back up and write about them.”Although many of the short stories are fictional, “autobiographical moments are sprinkled throughout the book,” Marquart says.For example, one real-life experience is found in “Dylan’s Lost World,” the second story in the book. On the way to a show, Marquart met a bass player in a band from Fargo, who had been in a band with Bob Dylan years earlier. But apparently the band fired Dylan because “he was more trouble than he was worth, and with everyone in full agreement that the new boy [Dylan] just could not sing,” according to the book.Another autobiographical story Marquart tells is “The Movie of the World.” Right before a gig, her band’s drummer quit, leaving them scrambling to find a substitute. Fortunately, their sound man filled in, and everything was going smoothly until the band realized that the drummer had unknowingly been slipped a hit of acid in his drink, and was tripping through the entire set.Although “The Hunger Bone” has only been on bookstore shelves for about three weeks, it has already generated some positive buzz.Most of the critical acclaim revolves around Marquart’s first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of struggling musicians and her ability to make the reader feel the wear and tear of a traveling lifestyle that is sugared only by sporadic moments of fulfillment. “Marquart knows her characters and their world inside out, and musicians will find much to identify with in her stories,” reads a review in Publishers Weekly. Similarly, Edward Morris of Foreword magazine said that “Marquart understands the fragile community a band develops on the road and the intricate emotional alliances that form and dissolve among its members,” and that “each story in this collection glows with understanding.”The public will have the opportunity to hear Marquart read excerpts from “The Hunger Bone” at the Ames Public Library this Sunday at 2 p.m. She will also be signing copies of the book.