Synopses & Reviews
Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse's prophecy for life on earth at the end.”
NPRLike all Mr. Locks books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.” Wall Street Journal
In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny, Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincolns funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.
By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of Americas fabulous and murderous history.
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. His recent works of fiction include Love Among the Particles, a Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year, and The Boy in His Winter, a re-envisioning of Mark Twains classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Scott Simon of NPRs Weekend Edition hailed for mak[ing] Huck and Jim so real you expect to get messages from them on your iPhone.” He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
Review
Praise for American MeteorLitReactor 8 Raw Westerns to Read This Summer” selection
Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week”
Library Journal BookExpo America Book That Buzzed” selection
Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse's prophecy for life on earth at the end.” NPR
In Norman Locks recent novel The Boy in His Winter the author set Huck Finn and the escaped slave Jim on a fantastical voyage down the Mississippi River through three centuries of American historyand clear into the future. Far from a sequel to Twains classic, that book was an intensely personal contemplation of themes such as racial injustice and environmental degradation. With his new novel, American Meteor, Mr. Lock elaborates these ideas in another disturbing meditation on our national past. . . . . Like all Mr. Locks books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.” Wall Street Journal
[American Meteor] feels like a campfire story, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
American Meteor is, at its core, a spiritual treatise that forces its readers to examine their own role in historys unceasing march forward [and] casts new and lyrical light on our nations violent past.” Shelf Awareness for Readers (starred review)
Memorably encompasses grand themes and notions of transcendence without ever losing sight of the grit and moral horrors present in the period.” Kirkus Reviews
Rather like Thomas Bergers Little Big Man. . . . [Lock] writes beautifully, with many subtle, complex insights.” Booklist
Successfully blends beautiful language reminiscent of 19th-century prose with cynicism and bald, ugly truth.” Library Journal
[American Meteor] is not only a history lesson but also a reading pleasure.” Historical Novels Review
Like the western sky, American Meteor stretches to the horizon in all directions. . . . A lovely panorama to behold.” New York Journal of Books
American Meteor is at its heart a frontier yarn of adventure and discovery, insight and yearning [for] readers who savor the well-turned phrase and those who demand a little swash with their buckle.” Four Corners Free Press
American Meteor is a fascinating, prophetic contribution to recent historical fiction, and Lock is plainly an author well worth our attention.” Monkeybicycle
An adventure tale that practically bleeds Americana. . . . For fans of Little Big Man, this might be the book you didnt know you were waiting for.” LitReactor
Praise for Norman Lock
[Locks fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights.” NPR
One of the most interesting writers out there.” Readers Digest
One of our countrys unsung treasures.” Green Mountains Review
Our finest modern fabulist.” Bookslut
A master storyteller.” Largehearted Boy
[A] contemporary master of the form [and] virtuosic fabulist.” Flavorwire
A master of the unusual.” Slice magazine
Locks work mines the stuff of dreams.” Rumpus
One could spend forever worming through [Locks] magicked words, their worlds.” Believer
No other writer in recent memory, lives up to [Whitmans] declaration that behind every book there is a hand reaching out to us, a hand to be held onto, a hand that has the power to touch us, to make us feel.” Detroit Metro Times
Lock is a rapturous storyteller, and his tales are never less than engrossing.” Kenyon Review
Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth.” Shelf Awareness
Lock plays profound tricks, with languagehis is crystalline and underline-worthy.” Publishers Weekly
Locks stories stir time as though it were a soup . . . beyond the entertainment lie 21st-century conundrums: What really exists? Are we each, ultimately, alone and lonely? Where is technology taking humankind?” Kirkus Reviews
I cant think of another author who takes such evident, vocal delight in bending the laws of physics and geography (to say nothing of his flouting of various narratological and fictional norms). You can feel the joy leaping off the page.” Full Stop
[Lock] is not engaged in neither homage or pastiche but in an intense dialogue with a number of past writers about the process of writing, and the nature of fiction itself . . . taking a trope that seems familiar to readers of the weird but analysing it in the fiercest detail.” Weird Fiction
[Locks] window onto fiction [is] a welcome one: at once referential and playful, occupying a similar post-Borges space to the short stories of Stephen Millhauser and Neil Gaiman.” Vol. 1 Brooklyn
All hail Lock, whose narrative soul sings fairy tales, whose language is glass.” KATE BERNHEIMER, editor of xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and Fairy Tale Review
[Lock] has an impressive ability to create a unique and original world.” BRIAN EVENSON, author of Windeye and Immobility
Lock is one of our great miniaturists, to be read only a single time at ones peril.” TIM HORVATH, author of Understories
Synopsis
A scrappy Brooklyn orphan turned vengeful assassin narrates a visionary tale of the American West.
Synopsis
Publishers Weekly "Book of the Year"Firecracker Award Finalist "Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse's prophecy for life on earth at the end." --NPR
"Like all Mr. Lock's books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield." --Wall Street Journal
In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny, Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.
By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America's fabulous and murderous history.
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. His recent works of fiction include the short story collection Love Among the Particles, a Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year, and three books in The American Novels series: The Boy in His Winter, a re-envisioning of Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; American Meteor, an homage to Walt Whitman and William Henry Jackson named a Firecracker Award finalist and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year; and The Port-Wine Stain, a gothic psychological thriller featuring Edgar Allan Poe. Lock lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
Synopsis
" Norman Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights." --NPR
In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny--the second stand-alone book in The American Novels series--Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.
By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America's fabulous and murderous history.
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.
Synopsis
A scrappy Brooklyn orphan turned vengeful assassin narrates a visionary tale of the American West
In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny--the second stand-alone book in The American Novels series--Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.
By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America's fabulous and murderous history.
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage and radio plays. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.
About the Author
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award,
The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Locks previous works of fiction include Love Among the Particles, a Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year, and The Boy in His Winter, a re-envisioning of Mark Twains classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Scott Simon of NPRs Weekend Edition hailed for mak[ing] Huck and Jim so real you expect to get messages from them on your iPhone.” He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.