Synopses & Reviews
For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios—a people broken by war's violence. As the host of
Lost City Radio, she reads the names of those who have disappeared—those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decadelong bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change—thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.
Review:
"With a deft hand, playwright and novelist Ives (Monsieur Eek) sets this uproarious story in the lawless West in 1863. Moving at a mad-dash pace, the first-person narrative follows the tumultuous trail of Scrib, a 16-year-old who left home three years earlier and makes his living writing and delivering letters for 'ill-letterates,' for those whose hand is 'ill-legilible' and 'others... who hired me for my poetry and exalted style.' Indeed, this narrator's exalted style accounts for much of the humor in this sometimes laugh-out-loud chronicle, in which comic misspellings and wordplay abound. One character tells the scribe that he 'was born and breaded for words'; and Scrib underscores the importance of maintaining his clients' privacy in his 'perfession... I figger a letter writer's like a priest under the trained seals of confession.' But Ives's peripatetic plot includes ample action as well. As he travels by horseback making his letter-writing rounds, Scrib senses that he is being followed, and his customers notify him that a stranger has been inquiring about him. These two fellas — the first a villainous varmint and the second a kind-hearted African-American who is trying to deliver a letter to Scrib from his mother — provide, respectively, the novel's shoot-'em-up scenes and its poignant moments. Other appealing personalities add further dimension to the story, among them a ribald alleged outlaw and a wise Paiute Indian for whom Scrib writes letters to Abraham Lincoln, protesting the treatment of Native Americans. Scrib hints at a sequel, saying that he's sure another tale, 'will get writ sometime,' a statement readers of this gen-you-inely droll tale will cheer. Ages 10-up." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
About the Author
Daniel Alarcon's debut story collection,
War by Candlelight, was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award. He has received a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and has been named by
Granta magazine one of the Best American Novelists under thirty-five. He is the associate editor of
Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning monthly magazine published in his native Lima, Peru. He lives in Oakland, California.
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