The Kings and Queens of Roam
A Novel
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the celebrated author of Big Fish comes an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters, their dark legacy, and the magical town that entwines them.
Helen and Rachel McCallister, who live in a town called Roam, are as different as sisters can be: Helen, older, bitter, and conniving; Rachel, beautiful, naïve—and blind. When their parents die suddenly, Rachel has to rely on Helen for everything, but Helen embraces her role in all the wrong ways, convincing Rachel that the world is a dark and dangerous place she couldn’t possibly survive on her own…or so Helen believes, until Rachel makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down.
In this new novel, southern literary master Daniel Wallace returns to the tradition of tall tales and folklore made memorable in his bestselling novel Big Fish. Wildly inventive and beautifully written, The Kings and Queens of Roam is a big-hearted tale of family and the ties that bind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The fifth novel from Wallace (Big Fish) is an imaginative, sentimental modern-day tall tale. Its setting, the village of Roam (quite possibly in the Appalachian Mountains), is centered on a once-thriving silk factory established by the local patriarch, Elijah McCallister, after he returned from China with silk worms as his cargo and a young silk merchant, Ming Kai, as his prisoner. One hundred years later, Elijah's teenaged great-granddaughters Helen and Rachel are left to fend for themselves after their parents die in a freak auto crash. The eldest, Helen, cursed with a face "ugly from the day she was born," deceives the blind Rachel into thinking herself the homely one, never telling her she has "the face of an angel." The difficulties of the sisters' relationship climax with Helen abandoning Rachel, who in her agitation flees into the surrounding forest. Meanwhile, ghosts from decrepit Roam's glory days mingle with its current residents, including diminutive tavern owner Digby Chang. Throw a lonely but helpful lumberjack named Mr. Smith into the mix, along with a magical river, and Wallace's far-fetched, rollicking yarn, written in the vein of Manly Wade Wellman and Fred Chappell, consistently engages the reader.
Customer Reviews
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