A Fugitive in Walden Woods (The American Novels) - Softcover

Lock, Norman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1942658222 ISBN 13: 9781942658221

Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press, 2017

Synopsis

“[Norman Lock’s fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights.” ―NPR

In Norman Lock’s fourth stand-alone book of The American Novels series, Samuel Long escapes slavery in Virginia, traveling the Underground Railroad to Walden Woods where he encounters Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Lloyd Garrison, and other transcendentalists and abolitionists. While Long will experience his coming-of-age at Walden Pond, his hosts will receive a lesson in human dignity, culminating in a climactic act of civil disobedience.

Against this historical backdrop, Lock’s powerful narrative examines issues that continue to divide the United States: racism, privilege, and what it means to be free in America.

Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.

About this title

Review

Select Praise for Norman Lock’s The American Novels Series

“Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth . . . to create something entirely new―an American fable of ideas.” ―Shelf Awareness

“The American Novels series, Norman Lock’s current multi-year, multi-volume project, is nothing short of his most ambitious endeavor yet . . . a fusion of all his preoccupations: fabulism, storytelling and the story of the telling, and the exploration of history, its discontents and malcontents.” ―Big Other

“In each [American Novels series] volume the first-person narrator functions as a kind of refractive lens, bending and blending together a generation of texts and ideas within a single mind, and yielding a spectrum of impressions on the development of American culture and identity.” ―Millions

On The Boy in His Winter

“Brilliant. . . . The Boy in His Winter is a glorious meditation on justice, truth, loyalty, story, and the alchemical effects of love, a reminder of our capacity to be changed by the continuously evolving world ‘when it strikes fire against the mind’s flint,’ and by profoundly moving novels like this.” ―NPR

“[Lock] is one of the most interesting writers out there. This time, he re-imagines Huck Finn’s journeys, transporting the iconic character deep into America’s past―and future.” ―Reader’s Digest

“To call [The Boy in His Winter] a work of fiction is to tell only part of the story. This book is as much a treatise on memory and time and the nature of storytelling and our collective national conscience. . . . Much of it wildly funny and extremely intelligent.” ―Star Tribune

“Lock plays profound tricks, with language―his is crystalline and underline-worthy―and with time, the perfect metaphor for which is the mighty Mississippi itself.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

On American Meteor

“Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse’s prophecy for life on earth at the end.” ―NPR

“[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain’s spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock’s books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.” ―Wall Street Journal

“[American Meteor] feels like a campfire story, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“American Meteor is, at its core, a spiritual treatise that forces its readers to examine their own role in history’s unceasing march forward [and] casts new and lyrical light on our nation’s violent past.” ―Shelf Awareness for Readers (starred review)

On The Port-Wine Stain

“Lock’s novel engages not merely with [Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mütter] but with decadent fin de siècle art and modernist literature that raised philosophical and moral questions about the metaphysical relations among art, science and human consciousness. The reader is just as spellbound by Lock’s story as [his novel’s narrator] is by Poe’s. . . . Echoes of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Freud’s theory of the uncanny abound in this mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered homage to a pioneer of American Gothic fiction.” ―New York Times Book Review

“As polished as its predecessors, The Boy in His Winter and American Meteor. . . . An enthralling and believable picture of the descent into madness, told in chillingly beautiful prose that Poe might envy.” ―Library Journal (starred review)

“As lyrical and alluring as Poe’s own original work, The Port-Wine Stain captures the magic, mystery, and madness of the great American author while weaving an eerie and original tale in homage to him.” ―Foreword Reviews

“This chilling and layered story of obsession succeeds both as a moody period piece and as an effective and memorable homage to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.” ―Kirkus Reviews

On A Fugitive in Walden Woods

“A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau’s time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. . . . This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day.” ―Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling

“Bold and enlightening. . . . An important novel that creates a vivid social context for the masterpieces of such writers as Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne and also offers valuable insights about our current conscious and unconscious racism.” ―Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife and The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

“Bursts with intellectual energy, with moral urgency, and with human feeling. . . . Achieves the alchemy of good fiction through which philosophy takes on all the flaws and ennoblements of real, embodied life.” ―Millions

“Demonstrates Lock’s uncanny ability to inhabit historical figures and meticulously capture the vernacular of the time like a transcendentalist ventriloquist. . . . Offer[s] profound insights that sharpen our understanding of American history.” ―Booklist (starred review)

On The Wreckage of Eden

“Perceptive and contemplative. . . . Bring[s] the 1840–60s to life with shimmering prose.” ―Library Journal (starred review)

“Lock deftly tells a visceral story of belief and conflict, with abundant moments of tragedy and transcendence along the way.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“The lively passages of Emily’s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.” ―Publishers Weekly

“[A] consistently excellent series. . . . Lock has an impressive ear for the musicality of language, and his characteristic lush prose brings vitality and poetic authenticity to the dialogue.” ―Booklist

About the Author

Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1942658222
• ISBN 13: 9781942658221
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240