An inspiring tale of a quest for purpose, perfect for fans of Western fiction.
A debut historical novel about a privileged young man in the 19th century who forsakes his fortune in search of a new identity.
Drucker May is a troubled man in 1890 Atlanta. In a matter of days, he will assume a leadership post at the Atlanta Southern National Bank, a position long held by his father. Although his succession seems natural enough, Drucker is dreading it. He’s never enjoyed bank work, and he’s desperate to find greater purpose to his life. At the eleventh hour, he leaves town in search of personal reinvention. He heads for Boston, where he hopes to locate a woman who served as his childhood governess. Unfortunately, the first of many traveling mistakes lands him on a train headed in the wrong direction. He disembarks in the small town of Clayton, Arkansas, where he assumes a fake identity to help the townspeople find a horse thief. As much as he enjoys life in Clayton, his involvement in a confusing romantic triangle makes him decide to move on. He travels to Austin, Texas, where he interacts with various politicians, including real-life characters such as railroad magnate Jay Gould. When another romance brings new complications, Drucker sets his sights on California. Yet again, unforeseen circumstances leave him waylaid instead, this time landing him at the center of a bizarre caper. As the story’s misadventures continue, the surprising twists and turns keep the narrative moving along. The tale is full of engrossing historical details, including information about the various towns and political climates that Drucker encounters as he travels west. It also effectively brings to life the experience of 19th-century rail travel. Despite the emphasis on history, Everett’s prose is full of compassion and insight as she explores the psyche of a character who’s discontented with the status quo. As Drucker tries to determine his place in the world, readers will find themselves rooting for him the whole way.
An inspiring tale of a quest for purpose, perfect for fans of Western fiction.Pub Date: July 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9963977-0-4
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Senior Prospect Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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