Trenton Makes
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In 1946, in the hardscrabble industrial city of Trenton, New Jersey, a woman kills her army veteran husband in a domestic brawl—and then assumes his identity. As Abe Kunstler, he secures a factory job, buys a car, and successfully woos a young woman with whom he makes a home. But for Abe, this is not enough: to complete his transformation, he needs a son. Fast-forward to 1971, and the certainties of midcentury triumphalism are a distant, bitter memory, Trenton’s heyday as a factory town is long past, and the family life Abe has so carefully constructed is crumbling under the intolerable pressures of his long ruse. Written in brilliantly stylized prose, Trenton Makes is the indelibly told story of a woman determined to carve out her share of the American Dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this taut debut, Koelb takes on manhood and the rise and fall of the American Century as Trenton, N.J., evolves from a booming postwar factory town to a place full of closed factories and dope-smoking, draft-dodging hippies. The protagonist, Abe Kunstler, is a watchful, angry man whose life is predicated on keeping his secret: he is no man at all, but a woman who killed her traumatized veteran husband in a marital fight, cut her hair, and, physically built up from wartime factory work, went out into the world. For Abe, power lies in manliness, not the weak body of a disrespected female. For a while he achieves that power: he acquires the suit that makes him feel like a "real man"; a marriage of sorts with Inez, a dancehall girl with a taste for alcohol; and even a son. But the son intended as the final proof and future of Abe's masculinity comes of age when America is riven by generational divides and mired in a senseless war. Koelb is insightful, if not always subtle, about how short the era of triumphant white American manhood was and its tendency to fight a rear-guard action that hurts men and those they love.
