FLICKER OLD DREAMS - Couverture souple

Henderson, Susan

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0062686704 ISBN 13 : 9780062686701

Editeur : Perennial, 2018

Synopsis

High Plains Book Award Winner for
Fiction • Western Writers of America
Spur Award Winner for Best Contemporary  Western Novel •  WILLA Literary Award Winner
in Contemporary Fiction • Montana Book Award Honor Book

With the quiet precision of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and the technical clarity of Mary Roach’s Stiff, this is a novel about a young woman who comes most alive while working in her father’s mortuary in a small, forgotten Western town.

"The dead come to me vulnerable, sharing their stories and secrets . . . "

Mary Crampton has spent all of her thirty years in Petroleum, a small Western town once supported by a powerful grain company. Living at home, she works as the embalmer in her father’s mortuary: an unlikely job that has long marked her as an outsider. Yet, to Mary there is a satisfying art to positioning and styling each body to capture the essence of a subject’s life.

Though some townsfolk pretend that the community is thriving, the truth is that Petroleum is crumbling away—a process that began twenty years ago when an accident in the grain elevator killed a beloved high school athlete. The mill closed for good, the train no longer stopped in town, and Robert Golden, the victim’s younger brother, was widely blamed for the tragedy and shipped off to live elsewhere. Now, out of the blue, Robert has returned to care for his terminally ill mother. After Mary—reserved, introspective, and deeply lonely—strikes up an unlikely friendship with him, shocking the locals, she finally begins to consider what might happen if she dared to leave Petroleum.

Set in the American West, The Flicker of Old Dreams explores themes of resilience, redemption, and loyalty in prose as lyrical as it is powerful.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Susan Henderson is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. She is the author of two novels, The Flicker of Old Dreams and Up from the Blue, both published by HarperCollins. Susan lives in Kings Park, New York and blogs at the writer support group, LitPark.com.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

The dead come to me vulnerable, sharing their stories and secrets. . . .

Mary Crampton has spent all of her thirty years in Petroleum, a small western town once supported by its grain industry. Living at home, she works as the embalmer in her father’s mortuary: an unlikely job that has long marked her as an outsider. Yet, to Mary, there is a satisfying art to positioning and styling each body to capture the essence of a subject’s life.

Though some townsfolk pretend that the community is thriving, the truth is that Petroleum is crumbling away—a process that began twenty years ago when an accident in the grain elevator killed a beloved high school athlete. The granary closed for good, the train no longer stopped in town, and Robert Golden, the victim’s younger brother, was widely blamed for the tragedy and shipped off to live elsewhere. Now, out of the blue, Robert has returned to care for his terminally ill mother. After Mary—reserved, introspective, and deeply lonely—strikes up an unlikely friendship with him, shocking the locals, she finally begins to consider what might happen if she dared to leave Petroleum.

Set in America’s Great Plains, The Flicker of Old Dreams explores themes of resilience, redemption, and loyalty in prose as lyrical as it is powerful.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Perennial
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0062686704
• ISBN 13: 9780062686701
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 320
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: HarperCollins Publishers Ireland; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; Macken House 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin; D01 C9W8; Irlande