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Random House
March 2007
On Sale: March 6, 2007
640 pages
ISBN: 0375504737
EAN: 9780375504730
Hardcover
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Fiction
Heyday is a brilliantly imagined, wildly entertaining tale
of America’s boisterous coming of age–a sweeping panorama of
madcap rebellion and overnight fortunes, palaces and
brothels, murder and revenge–as well as the story of a
handful of unforgettable characters discovering the nature
of freedom, loyalty, friendship, and true love. In the middle of the nineteenth century, modern life is
being born: the mind-boggling marvels of photography, the
telegraph, and railroads; a flood of show business
spectacles and newspapers; rampant sex and drugs and drink
(and moral crusades against all three); Wall Street awash
with money; and giddy utopian visions everywhere. Then,
during a single amazing month at the beginning of 1848,
history lurches: America wins its war of manifest destiny
against Mexico, gold is discovered in northern California,
and revolutions sweep across Europe–sending one eager
English gentleman off on an epic transatlantic adventure. . . . Amid the tumult, aristocratic Benjamin Knowles impulsively
abandons the Old World to reinvent himself in New York,
where he finds himself embraced by three restless young
Americans: Timothy Skaggs, muckraking journalist,
daguerreotypist, pleasure-seeker, stargazer; the fireman
Duff Lucking, a sweet but dangerously damaged veteran of the
Mexican War; and Duff’s dazzling sister Polly Lucking, a
strong-minded, free thinking actress (and discreet part-time
prostitute) with whom Ben falls hopelessly in love. Beckoned by the frontier, new beginnings, and the prospects
of the California Gold Rush, all four set out on a
transcontinental race west–relentlessly tracked, unbeknownst
to them, by a cold-blooded killer bent on revenge. A fresh, impeccable portrait of an era startlingly
reminiscent of our own times, Heyday is by turns tragic and
funny and sublime, filled with bona fide heroes and lost
souls, visionaries (Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, Alexis de
Tocqueville) and monsters, expanding horizons and narrow
escapes. It is also an affecting story of four people
passionately chasing their American dreams at a time when
America herself was still being dreamed up–an enthralling,
old-fashioned yarn interwoven with a bracingly modern novel
of ideas.
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