Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Peter Orner zeroes in on the strange ways our memories define us: A woman's husband dies before their divorce is finalized; a man runs for governor of Illinois and loses much more than an election; two brothers play beneath the infamous bridge at Chappaquiddick. Employing the masterful compression for which he has been widely praised, Orner presents a kaleidoscope of individual lives viewed in startling, intimate close-up.
Whether writing of Geraldo Rivera's attempt to reveal the contents of Al Capone's vault or of a father and daughter trying to outrun a hurricane, Orner illuminates universal themes. In stories that span considerable geographic ground -- from Chicago to Wyoming, from Massachusetts to the Czech Republic -- he writes of the past we can't seem to shake, the losses we can't make up for, and the power of our stories to help us reclaim what we thought was gone forever.
"A ravishing collection, full of wisdom, grief, beauty, and especially surprise." -- Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collectors
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his second story collection, Orner (Love and Shame and Love) fires jewel-toned shards of fiction into a stunning whole. These tales, many of which are as short as a paragraph, jump back and forth between Fall River, Mass.; Chicago; Russia; the Czech Republic; South Dakota; and other places, as well as skipping across decades. Though most stand alone, several feature the relatives of Horace and Josephine Ginsburg, a family's "famous once-hads," whose failed Ponzi scheme ruined their relatives and the whole town. Divided into four parts "Survivors," "The Normal," "In Moscow Everything Will Be Different," and "Country of Us" the collection explores the heartache of the past; many stories feature men trying to make sense of the confusing adult world they inhabited as children. Perhaps the most tangible example is the title story, in which Horace's brother-in-law Walt Kaplan a daydreaming furniture salesman in 1947 ruminates on the time in 1938 when he made it over the Cape Cod Canal just ahead of a hurricane. Impermanence and longing pervade the collection. In "Fourteen-Year-Olds, Indiana Dunes, Late Afternoon," one character "rises and stands in the shallow water and faces the beach as the waves break upon the shore, only to fall back toward her," just as Orner returns over and over to these crystallized moments.
