Panorama
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Richard MacMurray, a cable news talking head, is paid handsomely to pontificate on the issues of the moment. On New Year's Day he is scheduled to be a guest on a prominent morning talk show. As he awaits the broadcast, the network interrupts with news that a jet airliner has crashed in Dallas and that everyone aboard has perished.
Within an hour, amateur videotape surfaces of the plane's last moments, transforming the crash into a living image: familiar, constant, and horrifying. Richard learns that his sister, Mary Beth, was aboard the doomed flight, leaving behind her six-year-old son, Gabriel. Richard is the boy's only living relative. When he is given an opportunity to bring Gabriel home, it may be that the loss of his sister will provide him with the second chapter he never knew he wanted.
In this powerful debut, Steve Kistulentz captures the sprawl of contemporary America -- its culture, its values, the workaday existence of its people -- with kaleidoscopic sweep and controlled intensity. Yet within the expansive scope of Panorama lies an intimate portrait of human loss rendered with precision, humanity, and humor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The plot of Kistulentz's poignant debut novel (after the poetry collection Little Black Daydream) centers on a New Year's Day plane crash in Dallas that kills everyone on board. But this is neither a thriller nor a traditional disaster story. A short opening chapter describes the tragedy, then flashes back a day or so. The reader follows the highly self-reflective activities of Richard MacMurray, a discontented cable news anchor, as well as his sister, Mary Beth. She has been dating her boss, Mike Renfro, and considers him her leading prospect for marriage. Having a husband is a priority for Mary Beth, single mother to her six-year-old son, Gabriel, who has never known his biological father. Richard eschews the glare of the public spotlight for an evening alone with a bottle of wine, while Mary Beth and Mike ring in the New Year with a romantic getaway in Salt Lake City. The crash occurs near the novel's midpoint, and the story then follows the families and loved ones of the victims as they cope, grieve, and try to understand their losses, particularly Richard and Gabriel, who are brought together after Mary Beth dies in the crash. This is a lyrical and moving debut novel.
