The lacuna
Kingsolver, Barbara200911UU
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Presents the story of a man's search for safety in the grinding jaws of two nations, at a moment when the entire world seemed bent on reinventing itself at any cost. This book provides a story of identity, connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate. "The Lacuna" is the story of a man's search for safety in the grinding jaws of two nations, at a moment when the entire world seemed bent on reinventing itself at any cost. Born in the U.S., reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. Sometimes she gives her son cigarettes instead of supper. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, his wife Frida Kahlo and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, and the howling gossip and reportage that dictate public opinion. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in the internationalist good will of World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption. This is a gripping story of identity, connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate. Crossing two decades, from the vibrant revolutionary murals of Mexico City to the halls of a Congress bent on eradicating the color Red, "The Lacuna" is as deep and rich as the New World.
Main title:
The lacuna / Barbara Kingsolver.
Author:
Imprint:
London : Faber and Faber : 2009.
Collation:
512 p.
Notes:
Hardback.BCT - Book Club title, multiple copies available. StKrOLA
Biography/History:
Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in eastern Kentucky. She left there and went on to obtain degrees in biology from Depauw University and, later, the University of Arizona. In the intervening years she lived in Greece, northern France, Great Britain and the USA, supporting herself variously as an archaeologist, typesetter, X-ray technician, copy editor for a small-town newspaper, and biological researcher, before becoming a full-time writer. Her books include poetry, non-fiction and award-winning fiction, and in 1999 she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for The Poisonwood Bible. She lives with her husband and daughter in southern Arizona and in the mountains of southern Appalachia.
ISBN:
9780571252633 (hbk)057125263X (hbk)
Dewey class:
AFG
Local class:
GF
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
646821