The Son
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4.1 • 32 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Soon to be a TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer.
Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.
Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries.
Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli--against all odds--adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways, their language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the chief of the band, and fighting their wars against not only other Indians, but white men, too-complicating his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance, and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation, and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild.
Deftly interweaving Eli’s story with those of his son, Peter, and his great-granddaughter, JA, The Son deftly explores the legacy of Eli’s ruthlessness, his drive to power, and his life-long status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege.
Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon-an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In chronicling the settlement and scourge of the American West, from the Comanche raids of the mid-19th century into the present era, Meyer never falters. The sweeping history of the McCullough dynasty unfolds across generations and through alternating remembrances of three masterfully drawn characters: Eli, the first white male born in a newly founded Texas, captured and raised by Comanche Indians; Eli's self-sacrificing son, Peter, who shuns everything his power-hungry father represents; and Jeannie, Eli's fiercely independent great-great-granddaughter, who inherits the family fortune. Chapters detailing Peter's affair with a Mexican neighbor and his moral struggle with his ancestors' bloody legacy are keenly balanced alongside those involving Jeannie's firm yet impassive rule over the modern McCullough estate. But it's the engrossing, sometimes grotesque descriptions of Eli's early tribal years scalpings, mating rituals, and a fascinating few pages about the use of buffalo body parts that recalls Moby Dick that are the stuff of Great American Literature. Like all destined classics, Meyer's second novel (after American Rust) speaks volumes about humanity our insatiable greed, our inherent frailty, the endless cycle of conquer or be conquered. So, too, his characters' successes and failures serve as a constant reminder: "There is nothing we will not have mastered, except, of course, ourselves."
