By Mac Griffith
Buy new: $2.99
First tagged by Mac Griffith
Customer tags: hiking, mark spragg, ivan doig, norman maclean, nature, literary fiction, fly fishing, fathers and daughters, louise erdrich, action adventure, mountain climbing, colorado
Review & Description
Lyric River's Ben Wallace is a skeptic, but he doesn’t mind renting his attic room to someone claiming to be God, especially since this God is troubled by his own grave doubts. Ben does not even mind that God mooches beer from the refrigerator and is indifferent about paying the rent. Ben is less concerned with God’s aggravating ways than he is with figuring out how it might be okay to leave one woman he loves for another woman he loves. He is not at all concerned with continuing as single parent to his daughter—with this, he is a natural.
Ben, stubborn, smart-ass child of the South, once again separated from his wife, moves to a small Colorado ski town with Sarah, his nine-year-old daughter. Ben’s marriage to Karen, volatile, ambitious child of the city, is fraying, and the unraveling quickens when he meets Megan, serene child of the mountains, child of a crazy, murdered father. Ben navigates the end of his relationship with Karen, the rearing of Sarah, and the falling in love with Megan. Ben lives in a resort town, but his is the family of working locals, people who belong in the mountains, not the world of tourists or Trustafarians.
Typical small-town characters include George, contrarian newspaper editor, who spends his evenings in the Moose Jaw, drinking beer and arguing, if necessary, against his own editorials. Billy, the largest man in the county, dropped out of high school to drive a snowplow, and wanders the mountains, looking for the footprints of Thoreau and the secrets of Megan’s childhood. Iris, Ben’s rich, imperious neighbor, descendent of ranchers, loves Ben and Sarah and Megan; Iris also loves to hit anyone who vexes her over the head with a beer bottle; Iris is sorely vexed by Megan’s brother, Tyler, who follows dangerously in their father’s religiously demented footsteps. Tyler violently opposes the relationship between Ben and Megan, for reasons buried in their childhood. In the end, Ben and Megan are forced to journey into the abandoned mine that contains these childhood secrets; this exploration binds them together but ignites a tragic confrontation with Tyler.
"A lovely, romantic, and tragic novel…"…"luminous"…"the prose is drop-dead gorgeous"
Approximate values--225 pages, 111K words.
Lyric River's Ben Wallace is a skeptic, but he doesn’t mind renting his attic room to someone claiming to be God, especially since this God is troubled by his own grave doubts. Ben does not even mind that God mooches beer from the refrigerator and is indifferent about paying the rent. Ben is less concerned with God’s aggravating ways than he is with figuring out how it might be okay to leave one woman he loves for another woman he loves. He is not at all concerned with continuing as single parent to his daughter—with this, he is a natural.
Ben, stubborn, smart-ass child of the South, once again separated from his wife, moves to a small Colorado ski town with Sarah, his nine-year-old daughter. Ben’s marriage to Karen, volatile, ambitious child of the city, is fraying, and the unraveling quickens when he meets Megan, serene child of the mountains, child of a crazy, murdered father. Ben navigates the end of his relationship with Karen, the rearing of Sarah, and the falling in love with Megan. Ben lives in a resort town, but his is the family of working locals, people who belong in the mountains, not the world of tourists or Trustafarians.
Typical small-town characters include George, contrarian newspaper editor, who spends his evenings in the Moose Jaw, drinking beer and arguing, if necessary, against his own editorials. Billy, the largest man in the county, dropped out of high school to drive a snowplow, and wanders the mountains, looking for the footprints of Thoreau and the secrets of Megan’s childhood. Iris, Ben’s rich, imperious neighbor, descendent of ranchers, loves Ben and Sarah and Megan; Iris also loves to hit anyone who vexes her over the head with a beer bottle; Iris is sorely vexed by Megan’s brother, Tyler, who follows dangerously in their father’s religiously demented footsteps. Tyler violently opposes the relationship between Ben and Megan, for reasons buried in their childhood. In the end, Ben and Megan are forced to journey into the abandoned mine that contains these childhood secrets; this exploration binds them together but ignites a tragic confrontation with Tyler.
"A lovely, romantic, and tragic novel…"…"luminous"…"the prose is drop-dead gorgeous"
Approximate values--225 pages, 111K words.
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