Synopses & Reviews
"Nobody I know remembers, much less cares, that I paid cash a few years back for a custom 1977 candy apple red Ranchero 500, which my ex-wife now drives." Early Patrick Godfrey is mistaken. Several people care, through he's in touch with only three (and all in his head): Diane, the ex-wife in question; his detox doctor; and his post-detox "lady shrink." His ongoing conversations with them--ribald and heartfelt--pepper with comic urgency his wild odyssey in that Ranchero. Seeing in the local classifieds that Diane is selling the "half car, half pickup," Early walks away from his young charges on the school bus he drives and lights out across the snowy fields to take the vehicle for one last sentimental spin. He heads for the first of many bridges, the Mackinaw, in spite of his phobia about water crossings, or maybe because of it--and then north into Michigan's Upper Peninsula to the Chippewa casino he and Diane once frequented. There he's dealt a propitiously timed winning stud poker hand by a woman nearly as tall as his rangy self, with one eye blue, the other brown, and--as he discovers on their Ranchero jaunt to Cape May, New Jersey--tattooed from neck to double-jointed toe. Her name, she says, is Miranda Mountain. And why not? Earl is dreaming now. His story has the compulsion and suggestiveness of a dream lit by Atlantic City's eternal light, scored by the sounds of the sea, the racket of guns (for Miranda Mountain. has a past that stalks her as resolutely as Earl's stalks him). After a time together, bridges again loom to tempt her and terrify him--and lead both to a final, starlit scene of breath-stopping mystery and redemption.
Review
Curiously moving and affecting. (Booklist)
Review
(Jack Driscoll's) is evident in this novel (his) attention and emotion, description and unique characters make this novel a refreshing and fast read. (Nashville Tennessean)
Review
Jack Driscoll is a beguiling storyteller. Stardog is full of whimsy, tragedy and burlesque, while it hones observations on life and what's to be made of it. (Flint Journal)
Review
Jack Driscoll's writing remains fresh as ever. Strong story, immense fun. (Kirkus)
Review
Driscoll brings a poet's attention to detail and gift of lyricism to his fiction (Worcester Magazine)
Review
A great road trip novel. (San Francisco Examiner)
Synopsis
In an exciting, cinematic new work by the author of the critically acclaimed "Lucky Man, Lucky Woman, " Earl Patrick Godfrey walks away from the children on the school bus that he drives for one last sentimental spin in the candy apple red Ranchero 500 he owned in his youth.
About the Author
Jack Driscoll's first novel, Lucky Man, Lucky Woman, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book, won Pushcart's Seventeenth Annual Editor's Book Award-"and deservedly so," said Booklist. "[His] characters have substance, their predicaments arouse empathy, and his prose is as finely crafted as it is merciful." The author of Wanting Only to Be Heard, an award-winning collection of short stories, and four books of poetry, Jack Driscoll lives and teaches in Interlochen, Michigan.