True North

An epic tale that pits a son against the legacy of his family's desecration of the earth, and his own father's more personal violations, Jim Harrison's True North is a beautiful and moving novel that speaks to the territory in our hearts that calls us back to our roots.

The scion of a family of wealthy timber barons, David Burkett has grown up with a father who is a malevolent force and a mother made vague and numb by alcohol and pills. He and his sister Cynthia, a firecracker who scandalizes the family at fourteen by taking up with the son of their Finnish-Native American gardener, are mostly left to make their own way. As David comes to adulthood — often guided and enlightened by the unforgettable, intractable, courageous women he loves — he realizes he must come to terms with his forefathers' rapacious destruction of the woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as well as the working people who made their wealth possible.

Jim Harrison has given us a family tragedy of betrayal, amends, and justice for the worst sins. True North is a bravura performance from one of our finest writers, accomplished with deep humanity, humor, and redemptive soul.

"If the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, what should a son do to provide moral recompense? In Harrison's earnest, initially riveting new novel, narrator David Burkett decides as a teenager in the 1960s that he must rectify the ecological damage done to his beloved Upper Peninsula area of Michigan by his rapacious timber baron ancestors. More immediately, he vows to tell the world about the rapes and abuses committed by his alcoholic father, a charismatic Yale graduate with an egregious sense of entitlement. After a foray into organized religion, David finds spiritual solace in the stark natural world, described by Harrison in soaring prose. Unable to sustain emotional connection with any woman other than his older sister, David has brief liaisons with four women, but he feels more pain over the death of his dog than of his marriage. Meanwhile, he spends decades working on a history of his despised family, only to realize that he is a dud as a writer. By this time, he's in his late 30s, a man who has never achieved maturity because his father hangs like an albatross around his neck. A master of surprise endings (Dalva, etc.), Harrison pulls off a bravura climax when David attempts to reconcile with his feckless father. By this time, though, the reader may have tired of the monochromatic narrative, composed mainly of David's anguished introspection and depressed dreams. Still, Harrison's tragic sense of history and his ironic insight into the depravities of human nature are as potent as ever and bring deeper meaning to his (eventually) redemptive tale." Publishers Weekly

"There is a singular comfort in knowing, on the first page of a novel, that you are in the hands of a master....To read this book is to feel the luminosity of nature in one?s own being." Thomas McNamee, The New York Times Book Review

"Bleak and uncompromising, but stout-hearted readers will be impressed by Harrison's fierce passion and dark poetry." Kirkus Review

"The many pleasures embedded within make True North another necessary installment in the work of one of the finest writers working today." Mary Ann Gwinn, The Seattle Times

"True North is shot through with themes that relate to the question of manliness and the natural world, and in many ways the novel is an extended meditation on the nature of maleness itself...." Art Winslow, The Chicago Tribune

"True North, with its tensions, tenderness, wisdom, violence and salvation, is a truly American novel. There is grace and redemption — sometimes earned, other times merely bestowed or observed — on every page." Rick Bass, The Dallas Morning News

"Harrison?s writing is superb, as always, rippling with thematic leaps and poetic insights." Tim McNulty, The Oregonian

"When Harrison writes about a blizzard, you shiver. When he describes a thunderstorm, you see lightning. And when writing about fishing, the author is at his most poetic." Stephen J. Lyons, The San Francisco Chronicle

"[Harrison] bursts through with splashes of true brilliance." Dan Goddard, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"As always, Harrison manages to reward readers with poetic insights that transcend the characters and the story" Terry Fiedler, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"This human story of a son?s attempt to understand a parent?s cruelty is [a] deftly told tale." Gail Louise Siegel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"A worthy addition to the great [Harrison?s] work, and shows a writer, who, while comfortable with his themes, places and people, is not complacent in them...." Murray Farish, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Harrison can carry the reader into the Michigan wilderness with such vivid passages that they could serve a tourist better than memory. It?s not enough to say that reading Harrison is like visiting a place. It is like knowing a place." Fred Grimm, Miami Herald

"[True North] is a rich and satisfying read for the strenuously poetic passages detailing not only the complexities, quirks and intricacies of human emotions and interactions, but also for conveying a solid sense of place." Gordon Hauptfleisch, San Diego Union-Tribune

"[The] best reason to read [is] for its mix of profound, bawdy, spiritual and humorous events." Tyler D. Johnson, Denver Post

"Harrison is a masculine writer, unabashedly so in his appetites and enthusiasms, but never macho....He has readers not because his prose is stylish but because it has personality and a compelling storyteller?s voice." William Corbett, The Boston Phoenix

"Harrison, the veteran novelist, still soars with new energy in his twelfth book of fiction." Wayne Greenhaw, Foreword

"Harrison is Michigan?s writer, to be sure, and he is as fluent in the ways of nature as anyone. Through burly but graceful prose he gives us characters who practice a hardy, wind-in-the-face self-reliance." Scott W. Helman, The Boston Globe

"With more beauty, cogency and better writing than an aisle-full of self-help books, Harrison has stitched together an intricately written family history that suggests that our futures emerge only when the present is free of the past." John Schacht, Creative Loafing

"Like much of Harrison?s writing, [True North] is visceral, steeped in psychology, exacting in its descriptions of the natural world?and questioning of the way man has treated it." Steve Byrne, Detroit Free Press

"Harrison?s gift for getting inside his narrators is immediately spotlighted in True North. Burkett is equal parts mad monk and sensualist, and Harrison deftly balances these self-contradictions from scene to scene...." John Hicks, Weekly Planet

"Harrison, known for his ironic wit and his sense of humanity, assembles his usual cast of eccentrics and misfits...The evocative mélange of people and place is what makes True North a page-turner." Christene Meyers, Billings Gazette

"Religion and history figure here on a huge scale, as they do in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy....An engaging read by a writer to be reckoned with." David Kirby, St. Petersburg Times

"[A] transcendent new novel....True North features Harrison?s trademark earthy palette, complete with heavy drink, desperate sex and various self-destructive behaviors that characterize modern man?s attempt to feel something other than numb." Jay MacDonald, The News-Press

"He describes a place of incredible beauty despite being permanently scarred." Jeff Kunerth, Orlando Sentinel

"For a novel set in the ?60s, ?70s and the ?80s, it is very much a book of our times." Brad Smith, National Post

"True North is a heartfelt expression of [Harrison?s] love and respect for the natural world and those who want to honor it." Bob Hoover, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"In True North, Harrison takes his ?homeland? novel a step further, with the Upper Peninsula emerging as a force, as much a fully developed character as many of the humans." Aki Soga, Burlington Free Press

Jim Harrison is also the author of four volumes of novellas, The Beast God Forgot to Invent, Legends of the Fall, The Woman Lit by Fireflies, and Julip; seven other novels, The Road Home, Wolf, A Good Day to Die, Farmer, Warlock, Sundog, and Dalva; ten collections of poetry, including most recently Braided Creek, with Ted Kooser, and The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems; and three works of nonfiction, Just Before Dark, The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand, and the memoir Off to the Side. The winner of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association, he has had his work published in twenty-two languages.