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Fragile Beasts When their hard-drinking, but loving, father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town’s matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys’ story. Candace Jack doesn’t have an ounce of maternal instinct, yet for reasons she does not even understand herself, she is compelled to offer them a home.
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Sister Mine Shae-Lynn Penrose drives a cab in a town where no one needs a cab -- but plenty of people need rides. A former police officer with a closet full of miniskirts, a recklessly sharp tongue, and a tendency to deal with men by either beating them up or taking them to bed, she has spent years carving out a life for herself and her son in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, the coal-mining town where she grew up. Two years ago, five of Shae-Lynn’s miner friends were catapulted to media stardom when they were rescued after surviving four days trapped in a mine. As the men struggle to come to terms with the nightmarish memories of their ordeal along with the fallout of their short-lived celebrity, Shae-Lynn finds herself facing harsh realities and reliving bad dreams of her own including her relationship with her brutal father, her conflicted passion for one of the miners, and the hidden identity of the man who fathered her son. When the younger sister she thought was dead arrives on her doorstep followed closely by a gun-wielding Russian gangster, a shady New York lawyer, and a desperate Connecticut housewife, Shae-Lynn is forced to grapple with the horrible truth she discovers about the life her sister’s been living, and one ominous question: will her return result in a monstrous act of greed, or one of sacrifice? Tawni O’Dell’s trademark blend of black humor, tenderness, and keen sense of place is evident once again as Shae-Lynn takes on past demons and all-too-present dangers. |
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Coal Run With her eagerly awaited second novel, Coal Run, O’Dell takes us back to the coal mining country of western Pennsylvania, the territory she renders with such striking authenticity. Thirty years after a mine explosion took the lives of nearly half the men in the small town of Coal Run, the repercussions are still being felt by the residents and particularly by former football hero, Ivan Zoschenko, who lost his father on that fateful day. Returning after almost two decades of a self-imposed exile after a freak accident destroyed his promising professional career, Zoschenko, still known to locals as “The Great Ivan Z,” is now a reluctant deputy spending a week seemingly preparing for an old teammate’s imminent release from prison, a man who lived his life by the same philosophy he used when playing ball: a crippled man cannot score. While he waits, Ivan introduces a rich cast of characters including his wise, comic, and persevering sister, Jolene, a mother of three fatherless boys and a beauty pageant veteran who describes herself as “queen of a lot of things;” his childhood idol, Val Claypool, who left a festering wound in Ivan’s young life when he went to fight in Vietnam and never returned; Dr. Ed, Ivan’s former pediatrician who brings a zealous new meaning to the words “house call;” Crystal, a comatose woman in a convalescent home that Ivan has developed an inexplicable attachment to, and Zo, the recently-deceased matriarch of the town whose gift-giving from the grave is one of the threads holding the community together. During this week, Ivan also reveals himself to be a man whose conscience is burdened by a long-held and shocking secret that he must finally reckon with if he has any hopes of being able to stay. Ivan's struggle to accept the love he feels for a place he blames for his failures will ultimately determine if he will stay or go. His search for a new identity within his old world mirrors the region’s search for a new purpose after the loss of the mining industry. The results may enable him to finally forgive the people who he believes ruined him with their adoration and to finally forgive himself for a mistake he made a long time ago. (continues)
Filled with the same unflinching honesty, riveting characters, and understanding for a place and a way of life that made her first novel such a huge success, Coal Run is another stunning example of O’Dell’s ability to find humor and humanity in the bleakest states. It is an uncompromising and absorbing novel that advances on, even transcends, the promise of Back Roads. |
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Back
Roads An intense,
vibrant debut novel set among the back roads of Pennsylvania's mining
country About Back Roads:
Todd Field is developing Back Roads for DreamWorks Inc., with Frank Darabont set to produce. Field directed the acclaimed movie "In the Bedroom", which was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Darabont's previous credits include writing and directing The Shawshank Redemption and writing, directing and producing The Green Mile. He wrote the screenplay for the fourth Indiana Jones film for Steven Spielberg. An
intense story of family, frailty and dysfunction set in the coal-mining
towns of Western Pennsylvania... Captivatingly told. Tense...Involving...Deftly captures the voice of a teenage boy. A
strong, thoughtful first novel. Poignant...Achingly beautiful prose...Remarkable It all
rings true In the
finest tradition of Faulkner and Caldwell |
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