Postcards

Description

Annie Proulx's first novel received huge acclaim and marked the launch of an outstanding literary career. 'Proulx has come close to writing "the great American novel" ' New York Times Postcards is the story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for 40 years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home -- not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences...

E. Annie Proulx is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Shipping News" and the acclaimed 'Accordion Crimes'. She was born in 1935 in Connecticut USA, where her family have lived since 1635, but has spent most of her life in Vermont. She has been a newspaper editor, medical writer, historian and author. Her first book was a collection of short stories, 'Heart Songs and Other Stories'. Her first novel, 'Postcards', was published when she was in her 50s.

'The richness of America is portrayed with memorable effect in this remarkable first novel -- Faulkner springs to mind. Postcards is written from the heart and -- for its raspy dialogue, laconic humour and beautiful description of the natural world -- deserves to be widely read.' Independent on Sunday 'A sweeping and dramatic tale. Not since Steinbeck has the migrant worker's life been so evocatively rendered.' Daily Telegraph 'A remarkable novel; poetic and yet driven by a strong narrative, tragic and yet scored with deep veins of humour. Loyal Blood is one of those rare, haunted characters who continue to live in the mind after you finish the book.' Literary Review