Synopses & Reviews
Praise for
The Fall of Alice K.Wise, wryly humorous, and aching with tenderness for his characters, Jim Heynen has here gifted readers with his finest and most poignant book.”
Ron Hansen, author of A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion and She Loves Me Not
How wonderful to meet someone as bright, courageous, complex, and real as Alice. This is a terrific novel, at turns funny, heartbreaking, touching, and poetica compelling read that just keeps getting better and better. I loved this book.”
Shannon Olson, author of Welcome to My Planet and Children of God Go Bowling
The eponymous heroine of Jim Heynens The Fall of Alice K. is a wonderful creationsmart, courageous, capable, and determined to go her own way. Shes also a true original and ready to take her place in the pantheon of literary teenagers.”
Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 and American Boy
If only there were more unruly girls like Alice K., unwilling to submit to dogma or traditionthe world would be a better place.”
Julia Scheeres, author of Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives
Heynen captures perfectly that time of life when we struggle to define ourselves against the backdrop of our family, our community, our religion, and above all, the dreams we have for ourselves. Alice is a character I wont soon forget. Hers is a deeply moving story shaped by an expert and generous hand.”
Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and Break the Skin
Long a true master of the very short story, Jim Heynen shows himself wonderfully adept in The Fall of Alice K. For those whove known the heartland farm country Jim has written from, this new book contains familiar terrain but deepens and varies it movingly. Those who havent met his work before are in for a readerly treat and many surprises. He writes of the simplicity of the complex, and the complexity of the simple better than anyone I know.”
Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle
Review
Praise for
Jim HeynenHe earns the right to claim belief for assertion, by having kept so firm a hold on his roots in the specifics of a country boyhood deeply felt and sharply remembered. The reality continues to connect other times and places at the source of continuing perceptiveness.”
—Denise Levertov
Jim Heynen can be funny, or serious, or both at once; and he appeals to young and old. They stand in line like Oliver Twist after his readings, to catch a little more. And that porridge is good, nourishing, delicious. It sticks to our shaking ribs."
—William Stafford
He is a storyteller for the ages. From the ages. For more than 20 years, this backwoods poet has been telling of life on the American farm with a half-smile and a raised eyebrow. His is the archetypal voice: sage, preacher, scribe, storyteller, wit. . . . Like Wendell Berry and Kent Haruf, who have staked rural America as their turf in long fiction, Heynen is the Pied Piper of farm life in short fiction."
—Milwaukee Journal
Praise for The Boys House
Heynen's book is a masterful peephole into the young male psyche and the family farm culture.”
—Minnesota Monthly
Heynen has the talent of conveying a great deal in only a few words.”
—Bloomsbury Review
One usually must look back to writers like Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner to find compelling portrayals of rural life. Happily, Minnesota writer Jim Heynen continues this tradition.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
Praise for
The Fall of Alice K."Meeting Alice Krayenbraak takes readers back to their own high school days but dont mistake The Fall of Alice K. for a coming-of-age novel. Minnesota writer Jim Heynens lovely tale of the small and not-so-small minds of the Midwest in 1999 is much more."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"What Heynen does with describing the Dutch community and the Iowa landscape harkens to writers like Willa Cather and Annie Proulx."
Shelly Walston, Wichita Eagle
"Alice's navigation of the rough seas of first love, oncoming adulthood and a familycrisis might be an effective metaphor for what the larger community is facing at the turn of the millennium but it doesn't read like a metaphor. It is, in keeping with Heynen's considerable gifts, painstakingly particular, immediate and moving...a finely focused, perfectly calibrated story of finding a balance between the forces that govern society, settling and striving, putting down roots and reaching for the light."
Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Heynen's gorgeous sense of place is in every detail....Heynen's prose is especially poignant when he's writing about failing farms....There is a darkness at the center of this book, which begins with Alice hearing gunshots as a neighbor kills 80 hogs to protest falling prices. It ends with Alice looking to a future that will leave readers debating whether this smart young woman deserved this 'fall.'"
Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press
"The Fall of Alice K. follows a 17-year-old girl as she negotiates the widening cracks of her Iowa childhood: a failing farm, a superstitious mother, homogeneity broken by Hmong immigrants. To pry prophetic revelation from her story, Heynen leans on his own strict Protestant upbringing, plus plenty of well-chosen words."
Minnesota Monthly
Seventeen-year-old Alice Krayenbraak, the eponymous heroine of Jim Heynens The Fall of Alice K., is a wonderful creationsmart, courageous, capable, and determined to go her own way. Shes also a true original and ready to take her place in the pantheon of literary teenagers.”
Larry Watson, bestselling author of Montana, 1948 and American Boy
"If only there were more unruly girls like Alice K., unwilling to submit to dogma or tradition the world would be a better place."
Julia Scheeres, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land
I love the care that Jim Heynen takes with the world of his novel, The Fall of Alice K.the world on the verge of a new millennium in Dutch Center, Iowa. Seventeen-year-old, Alice Krayenbraak, is a girl with a promising future until, partly through her own choices and partly through the choices of others, her life, like the failing family farm, teeters on the edge of ruin. Jim Heynen captures perfectly that time of life when we struggle to define ourselves against the backdrop of our family, our community, our religion, and above all the dreams we have for ourselves. Alice is a character I wont soon forget. Hers is a deeply moving story shaped by an expert and generous hand.”
Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and Break the Skin
"Ive been a fan of Jim Heynens small stories about the boys for years. How wonderful to meet one of the girls on the farm, and someone as bright, courageous, complex and real as Alice. Jim Heynens depictions of small town Midwestern life are spot-on, and Alice is a character to root for. This is a terrific novel, at turns funny, heartbreaking, touching and poetic a compelling read that just keeps getting better and better. I loved this book."
Shannon Olson, author of Welcome to My Planet and Children of God Go Bowling
"Wise, wryly humorous, and aching with tenderness for his characters, Jim Heynen has here gifted readers with his finest and most poignant book, a masterpiece of rural fiction."
Ron Hansen, author of A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion and She Loves Me Not
"Long a true master of the very short story, from The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap on through The One-Room Schoolhouse, Jim Heynen shows himself wonderfully adept in his lovely first novel, The Fall of Alice K. For those who've known the heartland farm country Jim has written from, this new book contains familiar terrain but deepens and varies it, movingly (and it is a story of a changed Midwest). For those who haven't met his work before, you are in for a readerly treat and many surprises. He writes of the simplicity of the complex, and the complexity of the simple better than anyone I know, Midwest and otherwise."
Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
"Heynens poetic language vividly depicts the grinding strain of life on a struggling farm and the strict moral code of the Protestant farming community. Heynen finely portrays the complicated character of Alice, a girl at the brink of adulthood with a promising future but naively willing to put it all at risk for the recklessness of first love."
Eve Gaus, Booklist
Praise for Jim Heynen
He earns the right to claim belief for assertion, by having kept so firm a hold on his roots in the specifics of a country boyhood deeply felt and sharply remembered. The reality continues to connect other times and places at the source of continuing perceptiveness.”
Denise Levertov
Jim Heynen can be funny, or serious, or both at once; and he appeals to young and old. They stand in line like Oliver Twist after his readings, to catch a little more. And that porridge is good, nourishing, delicious. It sticks to our shaking ribs."
William Stafford
He is a storyteller for the ages. From the ages. For more than 20 years, this backwoods poet has been telling of life on the American farm with a half-smile and a raised eyebrow. His is the archetypal voice: sage, preacher, scribe, storyteller, wit. . . . Like Wendell Berry and Kent Haruf, who have staked rural America as their turf in long fiction, Heynen is the Pied Piper of farm life in short fiction."
Milwaukee Journal
Praise for The Boys House
Heynen's book is a masterful peephole into the young male psyche and the family farm culture.”
Minnesota Monthly
Heynen has the talent of conveying a great deal in only a few words.”
Bloomsbury Review
One usually must look back to writers like Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner to find compelling portrayals of rural life. Happily, Minnesota writer Jim Heynen continues this tradition.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Alice Marie Krayenbraak is beautiful, witty, a star student, and a gifted athlete. On the surface, she has it all. But in Alices hometown of Dutch Center, Iowa, nothing is as it seems. Behind the façade of order and tidiness, the family farm is failing. Alices mother is behaving strangely amid apocalyptic fears of Y2K. And her parents have announced their plans to send her special-needs sister Aldah away. On top of it all, the uniformly Dutch Calvinist town has been rattled by an influx of foreign farm workers.
Its the fall of senior year, and Alice now finds herself at odds with both family and cultural norms when she befriends and soon falls in love with Nickson Vang, the son of Hmong immigrants. Caught in a period of personal and community transformation, Alice and Nickson must navigate their way through vastly different traditions while fighting to create new ones of their own. Funny and provocative, amusing and unsettling, The Fall of Alice K. marks a watershed moment in the publishing career of author, Jim Heynen.
Synopsis
Fiction|Literature $24
Alice sensed that the Rev was looking straight at her. He knew she was a big achiever in school, and he knew how hungry she was for success. He knew she was a Seeker! She felt cornered by his admonitions. She was one of the restless and unsatisfied ones who was outside the fold, a wayward sheep. . . .”
Seventeen-year-old Alice Marie Krayenbraak is beautiful and witty, a star student and a gifted athlete. On the surface, she has it all. But in Alices hometown of Dutch Center, Iowa, nothing is as it seems. Behind the façade of order and tidiness, the family farm is failing, Alices mother awaits the apocalypse, and her parents are planning to send her special-needs sister away. On top of it all, Dutch Center is rattled by an influx of foreign farm workers.
In the fall of her senior year, Alice falls in love with Nickson Vang, the son of Hmong immigrants.
Caught at a moment of personal and community transformation, Alice and Nickson must navigate their way through vastly different traditions while fighting to create new ones of their own.
Funny and provocative, amusing and unsettling, The Fall of Alice K. marks the highly anticipated return of celebrated author Jim Heynen.
Jim Heynen was born on a farm in Northwest Iowa. He currently lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, Sarah T. Williams.
About the Author
A widely published author, Jim Heynen is perhaps best known for his collections of short prose featuring young farm boys: The One Room Schoolhouse (Knopf, 1993; Vintage, 1994), The Boys House (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), You Know What is Right (North Point Press, 1985), and The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap (Graywolf, 1979). His most recent collection of poems is titled Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems (Confluence Press, 2001). He has written two young adult novels, Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice (Henry Holt, 2000; Harper-Collins, 2001) as well as Being Youngest (Henry Holt, 1997), and one major book of nonfiction, One Hundred Over 100 (Fulcrum, 1990), which featured one hundred American centenarians. He has frequently been featured on National Public Radio reading his own stories and has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction. Jim Heynen lives in St. Paul with his wife Sally Williams, a former books editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.