Heroes of the Frontier: a novel - Hardcover

Eggers, Dave

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241289939 ISBN 13: 9780241289938

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2016

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES #8 BESTSELLER

From the bestselling author of The Circle comes a brilliant new black comedy about modern America
A mother and her two young children rent a battered old RV (optimistically christened the 'Chateau') and embark upon a journey through the Alaskan wilderness. At first their trip feels like a vacation: they spot wild animals, build bonfires, enjoy the scenery. But as Josie drives her kids deeper into the forest, dodging wildfires and increasingly eccentric locals, we learn more of the events that forced her to escape her old life. Fraught with unexpected encounters from the sublime to the ridiculous, her tiny family must survive this surreal adventure at all costs, in order to finally discover something clean and redemptive out at the very edge of civilization.
Heroes of the Frontier is a captivating and hilarious novel about family, loss and recovery, and a powerful examination of contemporary American life.

About this title

Review

Publisher's description. A brilliant new black comedy about modern America. A surreal family road trip through the Alaskan wilderness veers wildly off-course, as one mother and her two young children try to make their way back to the 'right' path - and find a new one along the way. (Penguin)

An unlikely state of the nation novel...The mirror image of Egger's brilliantly dystopian The Circle...[It] acts on the reader like a breath of Alaskan air, cleansing the spirit and lifting the heart (Guardian)

A classic American hymn to what you can discover when you leave everything behind (Daily Mail)

Sharp, funny, unforgettable (The Times)

Eggers is an engaging storyteller, with a sure sense of character and a keen eye for the bizarre (Financial Times)

The phenomenally productive Eggers has talent to spare...Remarkable, illuminating, believable...[It] entertains, often spectacularly (Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times Book Review)

It gleefully defies classification but, in returning again and again to the complex, overpowering love between guardian and child, feels like classic Eggers (The Times)

A softer, hipper version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road...Eggers' winning streak continues. (i)

From the Back Cover

'Eggers' most fun work of fiction, maybe also his most substantial' Herald

Josie has run away. She's abandoned her job and civilisation and flown to Alaska with her young kids. On arrival she hires an RV, lights out for the territory and finds herself more lost than she's ever been in her whole life. Neither five-year-old Ana nor eight-year-old Paul question their mother's wisdom (or indeed her midlife-crisis-cum-breakdown). Instead they take the forest fires and lightning storms, the gun-toting strangers and friendly loners, the freedom and terror of the wilderness in their strides. They know that at some point they'll be heading for home. If only Josie believed that too . . .

'Eggers renders it with such passion and good humour, and describes the 'land of mountains and light' in such stirring, lustrous prose. Can be seen as the mirror image of Eggers's brilliantly dystopian The Circle' Guardian

'Gleefully defies classification. Classic Eggers' The Times

'An engaging storyteller, with a sure sense of character and a keen eye for the bizarre ' Financial Times

'Highly enjoyable' Sunday Times

'One of our era's most sensitive chroniclers of American unease' Evening Standard

[backlist thumbnails, including The Circle]

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0241289939
• ISBN 13: 9780241289938
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400