"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Maya Shulman and Alex Rubin met in 1992, when she was a Ukrainian exchange student with "a devil in her head" about becoming a chef instead of a medical worker, and he was the coddled son of Russian immigrants wanting to toe the water of a less predictable life.
Twenty years later, Maya Rubin is a medical worker in suburban New Jersey, and Alex is his father's second in the family business. The great dislocation of their lives is their eight-year-old son, Max--adopted from two teenagers in Montana despite Alex's view that "adopted children are second-class."
At once a salvation and a mystery to his parents--with whom Max's biological mother left the child, with the cryptic exhortation "don't let my baby do rodeo"--Max suddenly turns feral, consorting with wild animals, eating grass, and running away to sit facedown in a river.
Searching for answers, Maya convinces Alex to embark on a cross-country trip to Montana to track down Max's birth parents--the first drive west of New Jersey of their American lives. But it's Maya who's illuminated by the journey, her own erstwhile wildness summoned for a reckoning by the unsparing landscape, with seismic consequences for herself and her family.
Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo is a novel about the mystery of inheritance and what exactly it means to belong.
Praise for A Replacement Life
"Boris Fishman's first novel, A Replacement Life, is bold, ambitious, and wickedly smart. . . . The only problem with this novel is that its covers are too close together. . . . Undoubtedly, comparisons will be made--to Bellow and the Roths (Henry and Philip), as well as to . . . Bernard Malamud." --Patricia T. O'Conner, New York Times Book Review
"Fishman, like his protagonist, is a born storyteller with a tremendous gift for language on all brow levels, making for a captivating and rare first novel that is tender, learned, funny, and deeply soulful--frequently all at the same time."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Fishman's firm yet light authorial hand, his gift for character and plot development, and his searing use of the English language belie his youth and his novice-novelist status. His witty dialogue and wry, believable descriptions leaven the dark, dense bread of the tale."--Chicago Tribune
"An ingenious debut. . . . The novel is often very funny, but its most rewarding moments come as Slava, listening to the war stories of . . . elderly strangers, finds himself drawing closer to the grandmother whose secrets once seemed lost to him."--New Yorker
"Powerful yet tender . . . real and vibrant. . . . Fishman never loses the reader's trust. No line in this book rings false, no character is unheard, no event seems like a plot device."--Newsweek"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
£ 18
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. ALL ITEMS ARE DISPATCHED FROM THE UK WITHIN 48 HOURS ( BOOKS ORDERED OVER THE WEEKEND DISPATCHED ON MONDAY) ALL OVERSEAS ORDERS SENT BY TRACKABLE AIR MAIL. IF YOU ARE LOCATED OUTSIDE THE UK PLEASE ASK US FOR A POSTAGE QUOTE FOR MULTI VOLUME SETS BEFORE ORDERING. Seller Inventory # mon0000483426