The Magic Kingdom
A novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From one of America’s most beloved storytellers: a dazzling tapestry of love and faith, memory and imagination that questions what it means to look back and accept one’s place in history. In 1971, Harley Mann revisits his childhood, recounting his family's move to Florida’s swamplands—mere miles away from what would become Disney World—to join a community of Shakers.
“Eerily timely. Can what’s gone wrong in the past offer keys to the future? The Magic Kingdom confronts our longings for Paradise; also the inner serpents that are to be found in all such enchanted gardens.” —Margaret Atwood, author of The Testaments, via Twitter
Property speculator Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine, reflecting on his youth in the early twentieth century. He recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida to join a Shaker colony. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith, and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. Though this way of life initially saved Harley and his family from complete ruin, when Harley began falling in love with Sadie Pratt, a consumptive patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, broke.
As Harley dictates his story across more than half a century—meditating on youth, Florida’s everchanging landscape, and the search for an American utopia—the truth about Sadie, Elder John, and the Shakers comes to light, clarifying the past and present alike. With an expert eye and stunning vision, Russell Banks delivers a wholly captivating portrait of a man navigating Americana and the passage of time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Banks's heartbreaking latest (after Foregone) delves into the history of a Shaker community in Florida through one man's tragic story. In a metafictional frame, Banks describes finding in a public library a trove of reel-to-reel tapes, on which Harley Mann recounts his years as a teenager growing up in the remote New Bethany Shaker colony. What follows are Banks's transcriptions of the recordings, which Harley made in 1971 when he was 81. After Harley's father dies, Harley and his family move from their faltering utopian socialist community to New Bethany, and though he doesn't immediately buy into the Shaker beliefs, he accepts the mentorship of John Bennett, the Shaker elder who sponsored them. However, when Harley develops an obsession with Sadie Pratt, whom he believes is playing him romantically against John, the stage is set for a devastating reckoning that undermines the colony's survival. Looking back, Harley reflects bitterly on the acquisition of the community's land by Walt Disney and the theme park's discriminatory labor policies, which ran counter to the Shakers' philosophy of inclusiveness. Though Harley's tale is deeply personal, Banks artfully presents it on a larger scale, showing how it fits in a centuries-long pattern of settlers who came to Florida seeking a better life only to find, in Harley's words, "It's where you go when your prospects elsewhere have ended, and you've not yet settled into despair." Banks's penetrating dissection of the American dream and its frequently unfulfilled promises is consistently profound. This is his best work in some time.
