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The Reconstruction of Wilson Ryder
Michael French
Terra Nova
March 2013
On Sale: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 1480037613 EAN: 9781480037618 Kindle: B00B3MSMTA Paperback / e-Book
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Literature and Fiction
Life for five-year-old Will Ryder is defined by a face left
horribly disfigured by fire. Though his English professor
father and precocious sister comfort and support him, the
mother who abandoned them all can never be forgotten. Growing up, Will believes that looking at him is what drove
her away. When a psychologist urges him to explore his
memory of the fire, he chooses instead to suppress its pain
and trauma. Will takes up painting for both solace and a
refuge from bullying at school, and finds a path that offers
a different kind of struggle—to find his own identity as an
artist and a man. His talent brings his mother, now a famous abstract
expressionist, back into his life, and he discovers the real
reason she fled from her family. Despite warnings from his
father, he allows her role in his life to grow, leading to
unexpected opportunity and a strange bond shaped by the
artistic fires that drive them both. Struggling to develop his ability, he must choose between
the philosophies and ideals of his two very different
parents—the father who raised him with loving care and the
mother who considers feelings and emotions only roadblocks
on an artist’s creative path. Will’s talent grows as he acts out his anger. Struggling in
the competitive art world of Chicago and New York, he
desperately seeks his mother’s love and acceptance but
instead must live with the only help she is able to give:
subsistence money and the harsh counsel that has painfully
shaped her own life. An artist’s true way, she insists, must be through
adversity. A brutal physical attack that leaves his family
in crisis, and an eccentric girl whose strange wildness he
comes to love, help lead Will to a series of bold,
cathartic, searingly honest self-portraits—embracing the
face he's always run from.
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