Purchase
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
November 2010
On Sale: October 21, 2010
320 pages
ISBN: 0151014434
EAN: 9780151014439
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction
On a moonless Texas night in 1895, an ambitious young
landowner suffers the loss of "the only woman he s ever been
fond of" when his wife dies during childbirth with the
couple's fourth boy, Karel. From an early age Karel proves
so talented on horseback that his father enlists him to ride
in acreage-staked horseraces against his neighbors. But
Karel is forever haunted by thoughts of the mother he never
knew, by the bloodshot blame in his father's eyes, and
permanently marked by the yoke he and his brothers are
forced to wear to plow the family fields. Confident only in
the saddle, Karel is certain that the horse "wants the whip
the same way he wants his pop's strap . . . the closest he
ever gets to his father's touch." In the winter of 1910,
Karel rides in the ultimate high-stakes race against a
powerful Spanish patriarch and his alluring daughters.
Hanging in the balance are his father's fortune, his
brother's futures, and his own fate. Fourteen years later,
with the stake of the race still driven hard between him and
his brothers, Karel is finally forced to dress the wounds of
his past and to salvage the tattered fabric of his family. Reminiscent of Kent Haruf's portrayals of hope amidst human
heartbreak and Cormac McCarthy's finely hewn evocations of
the American Southwest, Bruce Machart's striking debut is as
well wrought as it is riveting. It compels us to consider
the inescapable connections between sons and their mothers,
between landscape and family, and between remembrance and
redemption.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy