Synopses & Reviews
In the spirit of John Irving and Anne Tyler, but with an endearing soul all its own, Brady Udall's The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint enters the reader's heart from the very first page and makes an unforgettable impression.
At the beginning of this high-spirited and inexhaustibly inventive novel of the American West, a seven-year-old boy on an Apache Indian reservation in Arizona has his head run over by a mail truck. Nevertheless, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint is anything but tragic -- or, at least, not purely tragic. For not only does Edgar survive the accident -- along with a hellish Indian boarding school, a wildly dysfunctional Mormon foster family, and the loss of most of the illusions that make most people's lives bearable -- he maintains his innate goodness and his belief in the redeeming power of language. The result is a miracle of storytelling, bursting with heartache and hilarity and inhabited by characters as outsized as the landscape of the American West.
Synopsis
Edgar s] soul is as spotless as John Wayne s .45, and so is Udall s sharp and rangy prose. His similes sting, his sentences go bang, and his chapters roll like the wagon wheels across the harsh Mormon desert of right and wrong. GQ Extraordinary. . . . There are pages that are just fall-down funny. . . . It s like nothing else you ve ever read. Newsweek Vibrant, big-hearted. . . . A poignant, picaresque odyssey. ?Chicago Tribune A marvelous first novel. . . . An adept mix of humor and pathos. Los Angeles Times An ingenious tale that] takes its heart from Dickens and its soul from America s great outlaw West. Elle"
Synopsis
Half Apache and mostly orphaned, Edgar Presley Mint's trials begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. As he is shunted from the hospital to a school for delinquents to a Mormon foster family, comedy, pain, and trouble accompany Edgar through a string of larger-than-life experiences. Through it all, readers will root for this irresistible innocent who never truly loses heart and whose quest for the mailman leads him to an unexpected home.
Synopsis
"Rambling and generous . . . it reads at times like a John Irving novel touched up by Roy Blount Jr. . . . Sweet, sad, and refreshing."-- "[Edgar's] soul is as spotless as John Wayne's .45, and so is Udall's sharp and rangy prose. His similes sting, his sentences go bang, and his chapters roll like the wagon wheels across the harsh Mormon desert of right and wrong."-- "Extraordinary. . . . There are pages that are just fall-down funny. . . . It's like nothing else you've ever read."-- "Vibrant, big-hearted. . . . A poignant, picaresque odyssey."?-- "A marvelous first novel. . . . An adept mix of humor and pathos."-- "An ingenious tale [that] takes its heart from Dickens and its soul from America's great outlaw West."--
Synopsis
"Profound and stirring . . . brilliantly executed."--
About the Author
Brady Udall is the author of Letting Loose the Hounds, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, and The Lonely Polygamist. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Esquire, Playboy, and elsewhere. He lives in Boise, Idaho.