Staff Pick
In this sharply rendered coming-of-age story, Rocky idolizes his older brother, Paul. His admiration is tempered, though, when Paul disappears after an unlikely betrayal. Only Love reckons sunny nostalgia with bitter truths and shows how family secrets can reverberate with unforeseen consequences. Recommended By Jen C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother Paul — sixteen and full of rebel cool, smoking cigarettes, driving around in his Nova blasting Neil Young — until the day Paul, in an act of vengeance against their father, picks Rocky up from school and nearly leaves him for dead in the woods. Paul then runs off with his beautiful, fragile girlfriend, never to be heard from again.
Seven years later Rocky is a teenager himself. Although he’s never forgotten the abandonment of his boyhood hero, he’s now getting over it, with the help of the wealthy neighbors’ daughter, ten years his senior, who has taken him as her lover. But the affair sets off a sequence of events that bring ruin to both families.
In the spirit of Willie Morris, Tom Franklin, and Wiley Cash, this spellbinding debut draws you into a small-town American Gothic story of family fealty, scandal, and murder.
Review
“Ed Tarkington’s first novel manages an expert narrative feat--it is
somehow both ruminative and remarkably suspenseful. A novel of family
and love and class, of beautiful youth and terrible consequences. And of
heartbreak, of course, as the title makes plain and life makes
inescapable. Readers will be born along on the strength and clarity of
Tarkington’s prose, the twists and pivots of his plot. Only Love Can Break the Heart is a truly auspicious debut.” Michael Knight, author of The Typist
Review
“A rich, moody, moving novel about growing up and growing old before
your time. Tarkington’s people are rakes, rascals, irascible losers,
femme fatales, rich buffoons, dunderheads, beautiful loons, and one very
cool dude, all balanced by the voice of a narrator you come to love as
much as he loves his doomed older brother. On top of all that, it’s a
very fun, deeply satisfying, page-turner of a book.” Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
Review
“A wonderful, beauty-haunted piece of work. Tarkington’s voice
in his hard-to-put-down debut novel has a timeless feel to its
cadences, the same bittersweet music we hear in the storytelling of the
best of our Southern writers.” Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
About the Author
Ed Tarkington received a BA from Furman University, an MA from the University of Virginia, and PhD from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Florida State. A frequent contributor to Chapter16.org, his articles, essays, and stories have appeared in Nashville Scene, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Post Road, the Pittsburgh Quarterly, the Southeast Review, and elsewhere. A native of Central Virginia, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee.