Ipswich Public Library

Late city, a novel, Robert Olen Butler

eng

no index present

fiction

Late city

1241730527

Robert Olen Butler

a novel

"A visionary and deeply moving novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to a newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, moments of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana with a harsh father and escapes by enlisting in the army as a sniper. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago and begins a career as a newspaperman, meets his wife, and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships-with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son-Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner"--, Provided by publisher