Synopses & Reviews
"This is not merely a stellar book. It is absolute ballad put to page." --Southern Living
Lewis Nordan's fiction invents its own world--always populated by madly heroic misfits. In Music of the Swamp, he focuses his magic and imagination on a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father--a man who attracts bad luck like a magnet. Nordan evokes ten-year-old Sugar Mecklin's world with dazzling clarity: the smells, the tastes, and most surely the sounds of life in this peculiar, somewhat bizarre, Delta town. Sugar discovers that what his daddy says is true: "The Delta is filled up with death"; but he also finds an endless supply of hope.
An ALA Notable Book
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award
Review
"Nordan's engaging, wise, delightfully wry stories sound a melodious, bittersweet yawp, pulsating with love, grief, rage and a thirst for redemption." Publishers Weekly
Review
"None of this black-humored drama is uncommon to southern fiction, but Nordan brings wit, warmth, elegance, grace, and an original, persuasive love of his hidebound, inarticulate characters....[A] wonderful and memorable collection." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This is hard-hitting stuff, not for everyone, but those who do read Nordan's book will come away richer for the experience. It deserves a place on any library shelf." School Library Journal
Review
"Lordy, lordy, can Lewis Nordan write!" Los Angeles Book Review
Synopsis
In Music of the Swamp, Nordan focuses his magic and imagination on a single theme a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father.
Synopsis
Lewis Nordan tells of young Sugar Mecklin's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father. Sugar discovers what his daddy says is true, that "the Delta is filled up with death." But he also discovers singing mice in his mattress, hears Elvis on the Philco, and dreams of mermaids in this world where "magic might prove once and for all to be true."
Synopsis
ALA Notable Book; Mississippi Arts and Letters Fiction Award. Nordan's fiction invents its own world, a world populated by madly heroic misfits. In MUSIC OF THE SWAMP, he focuses his magic and imagination on a single theme--a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father. "Lordy, Lordy, can Lewis Nordan write!"--Los Angeles Times Book Review; "It is absolute ballad put to page."--Southern Living.
Synopsis
In his first book with Algonquin, published in 1991, Nordan focused his magic and imagination on a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father. For Sugar Mecklin, growing up in the Delta town of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi (the setting for many of Nordan's books), everything happens the summers when he turns ten, eleven, and twelve, around the same time his daddy tells him that "the Delta is filled up with death." Sugar discovers that what his daddy says is true, but he also discovers singing mice in his mattress, hears Elvis on the Philco, and dreams of mermaids rising from the lake. And he discovers an endless supply of hope.
About the Author
Lewis Nordan was a professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh for many years and the author of seven books of fiction and a memoir. His awards include three American Library Association Notable Book citations, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for fiction, the Mississippi Authors Award for fiction, and the Southern Book Critics Award for fiction. He died in 2012.