BKMT READING GUIDES
West of Here
by Jonathan Evison
Hardcover : 496 pages
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Introduction
Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, on Washington State's rugged Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience?it is storytelling on the grandest scale. With one segment of the narrative focused on the town's founders circa 1890 and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006, the novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past.
An exposition on the effects of time, on how something said or done in one generation keeps echoing through all the years that follow, and how mistakes keep happening and people keep on trying to be strong and brave and, most important, just and right, West of Here harks back to the work of such masters of Americana as Bret Harte, Edna Ferber, and Larry McMurtry, writers whose fiction turned history into myth and myth into a nation's shared experience. It is a bold novel by a writer destined to become a major force in American literature.
Excerpt
footprints, september 2006Just as the keynote address was winding down, the rain came hissing up the little valley in sheets. Crepe paper streamers began bleeding red and blue streaks down the front of the dirty white stage, and the canopy began to sag beneath the weight of standing water, draining a cold rivulet down the tuba player's back. When the rain started coming sideways in great gusts, the band furiously began packing their gear. In the audience, corn dogs turned to mush and cotton candy wilted. The crowd quickly scattered, and within minutes the exodus was all but complete. Hundreds of Port Bonitans funneled through the exits toward their cars, leaving behind a vast muddy clearing riddled with sullied napkins and paperboard boats. ...
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Discussion Questions
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Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
reviews: “An enjoyable, meaty read—a vision of a place told through the people who find themselves at the edge of America’s idea of itself.” —Los Angeles Times “[A] booming, bighearted epic.” —Vanity Fair “Riotously funny . . . Wonderfully charming.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A] big, booming ruckus of a novel . . . Evison [is] a tremendously gifted storyteller.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Evison gives us a jaunty, rain-slicked quest story . . . Its ending is clever and satisfying, and its arrival could signal the breakout of a promising career.” —Cleveland Plain DealerBook Club Recommendations
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