River of Heaven: A Novel
by Lee Martin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lee MartinEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-15
ISBN: 0307381242
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
Book Reviews of River of Heaven: A Novel
Book Review: Enjoyable but forced
Summary: 3 Stars
I enjoyed Lee Martin's "River of Heaven," but never got past merely "enjoying" it. First, he's an excellent writer--Martin writes with a reserved elegance that I truly admire and I relished many of his phrases. Beyond that, however, I felt he was asking too much of me, stretching my credulity beyond the common sense point. I just couldn't get past the feeling that it was a stage show with too much make-up and hastily painted props.
The attempts at the Philip Marlowe dialogue get a little silly--"He's killed a man, and even if it was in self defense, as I know it was--Cal with that Ruger Single six in the pouch of his hooded sweatshirt, just waiting for the right time to make it do its business..." I was waiting for someone to say, "Yes, angel, I'm gonna send you over."
Enjoyable, but forced.
Summary of River of Heaven: A Novel
"You have to know the rest of my story, thepart I can't yet bring myself to say. A story
of a boy I knew a long time ago and a
brother I loved and then lost."
Past and present collide in Lee Martin's highly anticipated novel of a man, his brother, and the dark secret that both connects and divides them. Haunting and beautifully wrought, River of Heaven weaves a story of love and loss, confession and redemption, and the mystery buried with a boy named Dewey Finn.
On an April evening in 1955, Dewey died on the railroad tracks outside Mt. Gilead, Illinois, and the mystery of his death still confounds the people of this small town.
River of Heaven begins some fifty years later and centers on the story of Dewey's boyhood friend Sam Brady, whose solitary adult life is much formed by what really went on in the days leading up to that evening at the tracks. It's a story he'd do anything to keep from telling, but when his brother, Cal, returns to Mt. Gilead after decades of self-exile, it threatens to come to the surface.
A Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Bright Forever, Lee Martin masterfully conveys, with a voice that is at once distinct and lyrical, one man's struggle to come to terms with the outcome of his life. Powerful and captivating, River of Heaven is about the high cost of living a lie, the chains that bind us to our past, and the obligations we have to those we love.
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