Synopses & Reviews
Lem Purchase is in California when a call comes in the dead of night: his younger, disturbed brother in Nebraska announces his plans to carry out an act of terrorism targeting the state capitol building in Lincoln. This isnt the first time Lem has had to make a frantic check on Jackson. Nor is it the first time that author Robert Vivian has taken us to the haunted world of the Great Plains. Critics called Vivians first two books in the Tall Grass Trilogy “lyrical and harrowing” (Sven Birkerts on
The Mover of Bones) and “brilliantly written” (
Publishers Weekly on
Lamb Bright Saviors). In this third and final volume in the trilogy, Vivian weaves the voices of Lem, Jackson, and Lems estranged wife, Lissa, into an American triptych of longing, remembrance, and innocence—of hopes almost fulfilled and inevitably disappointed—as we race to Jacksons reckoning with history that must have its day.
While Jackson hatches yet another plan that rivals the first in madness and ultimately threatens Lems life, Lems reflections reveal what, and how much, that life has meant. In Jacksons determination we encounter another view of what matters, as he clings to his apocalyptic notion of the only way in which the country can be reclaimed from its present madness.
Review
“Vivians ability to fully inhabit his characters, to render th Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Nebraska native Vivian uses the spare, vivid language of a playwright. . . . [Readers] who seek haunting prose and staccato insights into human nature from all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum will follow Breedloves journey willingly.”—
Booklist Steve Weinberg
Review
"There are many disturbing images in The Mover of Bones. Vivian doesn't shy away from death, or ugliness, or cruelty. But there are many beautiful images as well, and then there are the inexplicable mysteries. It seems to me this book contains every gorgeous, awe-inspiring, horrific thing life has to offer."—Katrina Denza Booklist
Review
"Beautifully, muscularly written."—poet Jane Hirshfield, author of Given Sugar, Given Salt and After Katrina Denza - katdenza.blogspot.com/
Review
"Robert Vivian's prose is lyrical and harrowing—harrowing in the Biblical sense. It is as if the killing fields were being irrigated with light. The Mover of Bones is disturbing, a chorus of the damned, but the music can be strangely sweet."—Sven Birkerts, author of An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th-Century Literature Jane Hirshfield
Review
"Vivian finds impressive depth in a slim and spare endeavor."—Publishers Weekly
Review
"Another Burning Kingdom entwines a set of perspectives on the prospects of future happiness—both personal and national. It simmers its way to a boil as Lem drives from California to his brother's prairie home to play an unwitting part in Jackson's drama while Lissa wrestles with her betrayal. Vivian writes beautifully, and his characters draw you into their dreams."—Tom Zelman, Star Tribune
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"Another Burning Kingdom is an excellent read that shouldn't be overlooked."—Midwest Book Review
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"Heartbreaking and beautiful."—Sophfronia Scott, Gently Read Literature
Review
“The three haunted voices of Robert Vivians Another Burning Kingdom tell individual tales of interweaving fates that also etch a portrait of Americas forgotten ones. Vivians visionary trilogy of novels is brought to stunning conclusion here, capping an original achievement in American fiction, offering both apocalyptic revelation and possible redemption.”—Philip Graham, author of How to Read an Unwritten Language
Review
“Vivian writes in the Southern Gothic tradition, though his fiction is set in Nebraska and the West. . . . Violence and the rural are important to this story, as is letting the dispossessed speak for themselves. The rural subjectivity expressed in Another Burning Kingdom is horrific and beautiful.”—Aaron Gwyn, author of The World Beneath: A Novel
Review
"Vivian is a latter-day Faulkner set loose with no editorial restraints, so there is no need to suspend your disbelief for this story. You can only go along for the brilliantly written ride, full of sound and fury that signifies little but moves us intensely."—Publishers Weekly
Review
"This spare and powerful work by the author of The Mover of Bones will find a select audience with literary fiction fans."—Ann H. Fisher, Library Journal
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"Lamb Bright Saviors delivers a powerful story within its mere 185 pages. Calling upon the vast prairies of the physical landscape and the crowded alleys of the human mind, Robert Vivian guides us through the possibilities of failure and redemption in a profound yet immensely readable novel."—Christy Corp-Minamiji, Blogcritics
Review
"Robert Vivian's novel has more than enough plot to satisfy. . . . The real star here is Vivian's use of language, poetic and rich, which makes an apocalyptic story that takes place in a small room become almost biblical in proportion."—Kel Munger, newsreview.com
Review
"This profound character study is a terrific look into the souls of six people seeking redemption. . . . The novella contains a stark Nebraska atmosphere that enhances the story line."—Harriet Klausner, Midwest Book Review
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"Robert Vivian writes with an eye for detail and an ear for music, composing stories from sentences as shapely as Baroque scrollwork and fun as a carnival ride."—Kelly Lenox, powells.com
Synopsis
In one hand, Jesse Breedlove holds a bottle of Cuervo Gold—or whats left of it—in the other, the shovel with which he has just unearthed the bones of a small girl buried in the cellar of a Catholic church in Omaha, Nebraska. So begins Breedloves odyssey across the literal and mythical landscapes of America, bearing the finely articulated body he has uncovered, bones that would neither rest nor, in their restless eloquence, let him remain silent. Through the heart of the United States, this mover of bones encounters people who live on the geographical and emotional margins and who find that his presence and his plight summon their voices. Rumors surface and reports multiply as the lonely, the addicted, the isolated, the damned, the pure of heart, and the holy sane speak. From the dark and distant edges of society, they bear witness—sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely—to what the mover of bones and his burden mean.
Defiler, redeemer, sinner, or saint—Breedlove is the stuff myths are made of, and The Mover of Bones, the first of the Tall Grass Trilogy of novels by Robert Vivian, evokes a collective dream of the heartland.
Synopsis
“Robert Vivians prose is lyrical and harrowing—harrowing in the Biblical sense,” Sven Birkerts said of The Mover of Bones, the first book in Vivians Tall Grass Trilogy. That same lyrical power carries this new volume to a place of hard-won hope and redemption at once both spiritual and earthly. Lamb Bright Saviors begins as an apocalyptically inclined itinerant preacher staggers across the Nebraska prairie. With his young assistant, Mady, in tow hauling a wagon stacked with bibles, its not long before the preacher finds hes come to the final fulfillment of his self-proclaimed lifes work: to die in front of a group of strangers. Odd as his own end-of-days might be, the lives and struggles of the strangers attending this deathbed scene are even odder. As the dying preacher unleashes a barrage of hallucinatory ramblings and rantings in the hope of imparting wisdom, each ragtag member of this unlikely congregation must reckon with his or her own dark past. And, through it all, the irrepressible Mady lends the preachers strange performance a surprising and unforgettable dignity and humor.
About the Author
Robert Vivian is a professor of English and creative writing at Alma College in Michigan and a core faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of, most recently, The Least Cricket of Evening, and of the Tall Grass Trilogy, which includes Lamb Bright Saviors and Another Burning Kingdom, all available from the University of Nebraska Press.