Synopses & Reviews
This new volume, his 24th, has all of the elegance and beauty that is expected of his books. It is both an elegant memoir of his wife, the Hollywood screenwriter Maggie Roberts, and a lively piece of poetic imagination. It is, quite simply, John Sanford at the peak of his career and in his own inimitable style.
A Palace of Silver is a story of love that survives all, even the McCarthy-era blacklist when John and Maggie refused her Hollywood studio's request to give the House Un-American Activities Committee "just a few unimportant names." Her response: "there are no unimportant names." This refusal was to cost them dearly.
The afterword to Sanford's volume, by Joseph McBride, is a delightful historical account of Maggie Roberts career in Hollywood (she wrote the screenplay for True Gritand dozens of other films) and includes a complete filmography of her work.
Review
"John Sanford is an authentic hero of American letters. His more than 20 books
are among its treasures. More remarkable yet, the Santa Barbara-based writer, who is now in his 99th year, still is adding to a body of work whose formal bravura and lyric prose are nearly without parallel in contemporary literature."
Los Angeles Times
Review
"John Sanford is to the novel what Thomas Benton or Grant Wood is to painting - a nativist who takes a purely esthetic delight in the salt and savor of the American character."New York Times
Review
"Here is writing that is rare in our country, limited indeed to the acknowledged masters."Paul Mariana, The Nation
Review
"There is a sturdy, old-fashioned virtue at the heart of Sanford's project: It is sincerity - a sincerity so serious and complete that it stands as a kind of reproach to the current vogue for confessional memoirs." Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times