The Loss of Leon Meed
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In Josh Emmons's inventive and utterly engaging debut, ten residents of Eureka, California, are brought together by a mysterious man, Leon Meed, who repeatedly and inexplicably appears -- in the ocean, at a local rock music club, clinging to the roof of a barreling truck, standing in the middle of Main Street's oncoming traffic -- and then, as if by magic, disappears.
Young and old, married and single, punk and evangelical, black, white, and Korean, each witness to these bewildering events interprets them differently, yet all of their lives are changed -- by the phenomenon itself, and by what it provokes in them. And whether they in turn stagger toward love, or heartbreakingly dissolve it, Emmons's portrayal of their stories is strikingly real and emotionally affecting.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his affecting but meandering debut, Emmons explores how the lives of a loosely connected group of residents of Eureka, Calif., are changed by the sudden, mysterious appearances (and disappearances) of a local man who's been reported missing. From teenage Lillith, the pregnant, practicing Wiccan, to "black as he can be" Prentiss, a recovering alcoholic, and Elaine, the fourth-grade teacher who suffers through two troubled marriages, each character visited by Leon Meed receives equal narrative treatment by Emmons, which highlights his talent for subtle ventriloquism but gives the book its curiously unfocused quality. Even Leon's bewildering plight stays somehow on the periphery; barring an unsuccessful pagan ceremony designed to pull him back from the astral plane, no one much tries to help him. Halfway into the book, Emmons, in a flurry of exposition, goes through the backstory about how Leon started disappearing after the accidental death of his wife and daughter. The novel then skips ahead 10 years, returning to each character as they learn of Leon's death. While Leon is supposed to be a catalyst for each character's personal enlightenment, too many self-discoveries from too many people keep their stories from fully resonating. This is a promising debut that suffers from its outsized ambitions.
