Rue de La Pompe: A Satiric Urban Fantasy - Hardcover

McCracken, James Earle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0595719945 ISBN 13: 9780595719945

Publisher: iUniverse, 2008

Synopsis

Celebrating his thirtieth birthday alone in Paris, Michael Whyte realizes that it is entirely possible to live an unglamorous life in the most glamorous of cities. Then, an unexpected gift of formal wear followed by a party invitation from his eccentric neighbors puts him in search of the first French franc-a coin said to be incredibly valuable and wickedly dangerous.

Guided by a deaf mute and mentored by an epistemologist, Michael careens across the city, from the Chateau de Vincennes to the Musée d'Orsay, from the sewers of Paris to the base of the Eiffel Tower, in his quest for the coin and for an answer to the question of its true nature.

Assisting, thwarting, or simply confusing him along the way is a bizarre collection of lunatic personalities including a Castilian hit man, a Zen Buddhist Swiss jeweler, a flatulent statue of Benjamin Franklin, a foul-mouthed rhinoceros, the Concierge from Hell, and an enigmatic beauty named Chione.

Rue de la Pompe is the first of four novels chronicling Michael Whyte's year in Paris.

About this title

About the Author

James Earle McCracken was born in 1960 in Takoma Park, Maryland, and grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC. In 1973, he received a scholarship to McDonogh School, a boarding school in Owings Mills, Maryland. After graduating from McDonogh in 1978, McCracken attended the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a BA in English in 1982. He worked as technical writer before moving to London in 1984 to pursue his creative writing. McCracken returned to the United States in 1986 and began writing greeting cards for Paramount Cards in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. In May 1989, he joined the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State. Since then, McCracken has served in Jamaica, Germany, Mongolia, Lebanon, Iraq, and France. During his posting in Paris, France, McCracken resumed writing and, in May 2008, published his first novel, Rue de la Pompe: A Satiric Urban Fantasy. He is married to the former Mirella Abdel Sater, a prominent attorney and human rights activist from Beirut, Lebanon, and has a daughter, Jamie, a junior at Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595719945
• ISBN 13: 9780595719945
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 244