Arcade Publishing 20100209 eng

GCDS-9781559707121 03 01 Arcade Publishing 01 GCOI 55970100607170 02 1559707127 03 9781559707121 15 9781559707121 BB 1 A01 David Adams Richards David Adams Richards has won numerous awards for his fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Peggy, and their two sons, John Thomas and Anton. 01 eng 02 eng 380 01 Spanning generations, <em>River of the Brokenhearted</em> explores the life and legacy of Janie McCleary, a brave Irish Catholic girl who dared to marry a man from the Church of England. Their union is quickly deemed scandalous, and when her husband dies just before the Great Depression, everyone in town, led by the unscrupulous Joey Elias, turns against her. Janie is left alone to raise a family. Her solution is to open one of the first movie theaters in North America, which she runs with such success that she manages to ostracize herself even further. She is a pioneer before the age of feminism, and the burden of her salty individualism will shape the lives of her children and grandchildren. Written with compassion and mastery, <em>River of the Brokenhearted</em> muses on the tyranny of memory and history, and peers into the hearts of extraordinary characters, where Richards finds an alchemy of venality and goodwill, deceit and brotherliness, and marked cruelty and true love.Once again, David Adams Richards has brought us a work of astonishing grace, rooted in his special territory on the great river of New Brunswick, but firmly universal in scope. 02 From the author of the Giller Prize-winning novel <em>Mercy Among the Children</em> comes the utterly beguiling, big-hearted story of one woman's resolute struggle to overcome small-town prejudice and deceit. 08 David Adams Richards is one of the exceptional writers of our time. </em>Alistair MacLeod 08 What is most thrilling about Richards' storytelling is how his people effortlessly rise above facile stereotype . . . Without patronizing or idealizing [the characters], Richards leaves his characters to seperately justify their own thoughts and actions to us, no matter how disastrous they are. This is true compassion, and it is indeed universal. <em>After Hour Magazine</em> (Canada) 08 Fascinating ... consistently strong ... well drawn. Publishers Weekly 08 Against a backdrop of 20th-century cinematic history, this rich, intergenerational saga rewards the reader with memorable characters and a story as strong as it is sorrowful. Library Journal 08 The plot builds with a pervading sense of doom as puzzle pieces gradually come into focus in this gritty probe into the repercussions of jealousy and greed. Booklist 08 "Richards's stark realism blends into comichappenstance. ... The book weaves comedy and tragedy,depicting plain folks and despicable ones but enoblingeven the most pathetic. ... The relationship betweentruth and appearances, so nicely symbolized by themovie screen, enriches this absorbing story ofoutcasts." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 08 There is an unmistakable talent behind <em>River of the Brokenhearted</em>. ... Compelling ... The pleasure of his writing, rightly compared with Thomas Hardy's in its sympathy for the outcast and underdog, is in the way he handles evil: as the assiduous perfection of self-justification. ... Excellent. Sunday Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer 08 His idiomatic novels have been compared to Tolstoy, Hardy, and Faulkner. ... Endearing and tragic, it's a tightly crafted and soulful masterpiece with a raft of characters often driven to do terrible things, less out of evil than desperation for survival. Sunday Morning Post 08 An homage to sense of place and the family bond. . . . <em>River of the Brokenhearted </em> burns with the intensity of a William Faulkner or a Cormac McCarthy. . . . Richard's plots are complicated, his characters as complex as real life, but he has the talent to lead us through the jungles of the human heart and personality without compromising these complexities. . . . <em>Mercy Among The Children </em>and <em>River of the Brokenhearted </em>qualify, I believe, both as great literature and as holy books, talking to us and telling us about ourselves-our hopes, our fears, our joy and sadness-in a quite extraordinary way. Jeff Minick Smokey Mountain News 08 Beautifully written . . . The characters and their meanderings are convincingly real. <em>River of the Brokenhearted</em> is an extraordinary treat. Historical Novel Society 04 02 72 01 http://www.arcadepub.com/resources/titles/55970100607170/images/55970100607170L.gif 07 02 72 01 http://www.arcadepub.com/resources/titles/55970100607170/images/55970100607170S.gif http://www.arcadepub.com/book/?GCOI=55970100607170 01 Arcade Publishing http://www.arcadepub.com 04 Doubleday Canada US 04 20040501 Arcade Publishing 01 IP 01 26.00 USD