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Summary
Summary
Seven years separate Buddy from his big brother, Lee, but the boys have always been close, comforting and protecting each other as their father-defeated by poor land and hostile weather-sank deeper into alcohol and rage. When a drink-fueled accident takes not only his life but that of the mother who tried so hard to shield her sons, the boys sell off what little remains of their daddy's tenant farm and leave Oklahoma. It is 1957, and work is still to be had in the logging camps of northern Idaho. But just outside Snake Junction, they stop at a roadhouse; and there, Lee's country-and-western talents get him a job. The two settle in, Lee to his music-and women and drink-and seventeen-year-old Buddy to roaming the landscape, at loose ends until a woman nearly twice his age turns up. Irene Sullivan is a smoky beauty, and Lee makes a play for her. But it is Buddy she wants. By turns darkly violent and heartbreakingly tender, Finding Carusois a work of extraordinary emotional power from an astonishingly original writer.
Author Notes
Kim Barnes is the author of "In the Wilderness", which was a 1997 Pulitzer Prize finalist, & the winner of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award, awarded biennially to a woman writer early in her career for a work-in-progress of general nonfiction. She lives with her husband & three children in Lenore, Idaho.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The arrival of an older femme fatale in a hardscrabble Idaho town drives a wedge between two young brothers in Barnes's fiction debut, a solid, evocative effort that suffers from some muddled plotting but succeeds because of the author's poignant writing about first love. The story begins in Oklahoma in 1957 with the death of the parents of Buddy and Lee Hope in a car accident. After the funeral, the two boys move so that 25-year-old Lee can look for work to support his 17-year-old brother. Their journey takes them to Snake Junction and the logging camps of Idaho, where Lee, a talented singer, catches on with a band and wows the locals, eventually attracting the attention of an L.A. club owner. Buddy, meanwhile, is smitten when gorgeous Irene Sullivan arrives in town and astoundingly chooses him over handsome, charismatic Lee. But Buddy is overwhelmed by Irene's sophistication, and soon his love turns into jealous obsession. Sullivan, meanwhile, is involved in an effort to help a local Native American boy named Wolfchild who is accused of murder. The three principals in the romantic triangle are well drawn, and Barnes gets plenty of mileage from her unusual backdrop. But problems pop up in the subplot involving Wolfchild, particularly in an unlikely series of scenes in which Buddy encounters Wolfchild after hearing rumors that the boy was involved with Irene. Barnes's rich, multilayered prose makes this an engaging read, and the affair between Irene and Buddy is well rendered despite the flawed storytelling down the stretch. (Mar. 24) Forecast: Barnes already has some name recognition as the author of two memoirs (one, In the Wilderness, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist). That, plus an author tour, should get her first novel substantial review attention. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
In 1957 in Oklahoma, two brothers face life as newly orphaned young men. Lee, at 25, is the older of the Hope brothers, and Buddy is a fresh-faced 17-year-old. Life wasn't easy with an alcoholic father-especially one who caused the car crash that killed him and their mother. Following the funeral, Lee decides to move away from all the bad memories and find a place where he can support himself and Buddy. They end up in Snake Junction, ID, where Lee is able to get a job singing with a local band. His singing not only finds fans among the locals but also sparks the attention of a Los Angeles club owner who offers him a contract. Things start to go sour when a local woman is murdered and a Native American named Wolfchild is arrested for the crime. The prose is mellifluous, with a bittersweet reminder that life is hard and growing up even harder. Scott Shina does a credible job of bringing each character to life, although his interpretation of female voices can seem a bit of a stretch, jarring the listener each time he makes the transition. Overall, an above-average coming-of-age tale that should find an audience. Recommended for all public libraries.-Gloria Maxwell, Penn Valley Community Coll., Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
CHAPTER ONE August, sky paling. The humid Oklahoma air crowds in. The chickens have breasted their bowls of dirt; the hounds lie heat-sick beneath the porch. The smoke of Lee's cigarette does not rise but haloes around us. Only our father moves in the stillness, and the mare with him, a dance of retreat and retrieval. "It's bad this time," Lee says. I have come to join him at the fence, where we stand and watch our father trying to saddle the pinto mare. We are brothers, Lee and I. Will always be. I am ten. He is seventeen. It is 1950, and our father is three days dry and angry. With the mare, who will not stand for the cinching. With our mother, who has turned him from her bed until he promises sobriety; with the two boys who have witnessed each new failure of strength and will. His hands fist and tremble. The mare remembers punishment, cannot stop her nervous shying away, the flinching each time he elbows her gut. I should go now, I think. Now is the time before it's too late. But like Lee, I cannot turn away. As though it is not the mare but we who are tethered to the man by bit and bridle. As though we know that it is different this time, that there will be a final telling of this story. Behind us, the churg-churg of the wringer washer, the distant smell of bleach and bluing. The corn stands hollow, stick-brown. Our father bites the butt of his cigarette, lashes the mare with the reins-across her shoulders, her soft pied face. Lee feels what I mean to do. He grabs my arm, says, "Don't." Our father pulls her nose-to-neck, grabs the horn, has one foot in the stirrup when she bolts. He hops once, twice, then goes down, caught and dragging. His arms flail out, his body bounces across the rough pasture. They will not go far-it is a small farm, sufficiently fenced-but on the second round his foot comes loose of its boot. The mare finds the farthest corner, stands white-eyed and blowing. Bastard Creek slews red and thick along the field's north margin. It has rained, but no one knows just where. I think I can smell it, silty and fresh, mixed with peachleaf, soapberry, nightsoil. I smell Lee's sweat and my own, the mare's sharp odor of fear. Our father rises, limps his way to the barn. We hear the cough of the Ford pickup, see him coax it out in an oily fog. He's given up, I think, he'll drink now, and some part of me is glad. He revs the engine smooth, slips the clutch, but instead of turning for the road, he steers for the pasture. The truck jerks forward across hummocks and rock pockets, our father jouncing behind the wheel, head knocking the roof. I am curious, wondering what he brings, what he means to take away, realize as the Ford picks up speed that he's gunning straight for the mare. He hits her hard, knocks her through the fence, rails splintering, raking the fenders. "Hold," Lee says, and I do because I cannot imagine what else. The mare is on her side, legs churning. Our father pulls rope from behind the seat, lashes her hind hooves, throws the other end over a fat limb of hickory, ties it to the bumper, backs the truck until she hangs suspended. We watch him step out with the tire iron, hear the crack of ribs, the horse's screams. Her joints tear, lungs collapse beneath the visceral weight. Our father exhausts himself, drops the iron, uses his fists, and I think I can hear this, too, although by now I am humming along with Lee, our voices growing together, louder and louder. No words, just the vibration at the back of my throat, deep in my chest. We are singing with our mouths closed, wildwood flower, wildwood flower, over and over as our father weakens, until he cannot lift his arms, unties the rope, backs away from the black-and-white body still heaving in its bright pool of blood. We hum a little quieter as we watch the Ford disappear toward town, quieter still as we kneel by her head, all the long while it takes her to die. There will be no burial, except, perhaps, in memory. What can be done with so much flesh and bone? Consider the tractor repossessed, the single good shovel, the ground dry and packed to stone. The gut rumbles, begins its bloating. We stand, look toward the small shack where our mother knows or does not know. We remove the saddle and blanket, the bridle and bit, smooth the mane. We leave the horse to crows and foxes, knowing what we do of the world's justice. By the next day, the moist breeze comes sweet with rot, settles in with us at breakfast, stays through lunch and dinner. We clear our plates, lick our bowls clean. We sleep with our windows open, the death of the mare a dream we cannot wake from. When our father returns three days later, sick on corn whiskey, we watch him once again rope the mare's hind legs, see him turn away long enough to vomit yellow bile. He puts the Ford in first gear, meaning to drag her to the bone pile, but the hocks pop and separate. He takes her in pieces-hind legs, forelegs, head-until all that is left is the body, swollen and grim. But now there is nothing to tie on to. He circles once, twice, kicks the belly hard. "Move away from the window," our mother says. Some things are better not seen. But we stay. We are rooting for the mare. Obstinate. Impossible. "Deadlock," Lee says. "Dogfall." Our father disappears into the barn, comes out lugging kerosene. He douses what remains, soaks it good, stands back as the flames jump high and clean then recede to a deeper burn. He looks toward the window, lights another cigarette, moves to the trough, splashes his face, the back of his neck. "Best not be standing there when he comes in," our mother says. "Dinner's about on." Lee looks at me, tips his head toward the door. "Let's go," he says. He means a walk, a long loop around the fields, maybe a turn into town for a soda. Away from our father, the greasy smoke. But how can I leave our mother alone with what comes next? I tell Lee to go ahead, and he does, because he can. We sit at the table, my mother and I, hands in our laps, waiting. She keeps her eyes closed, as though in prayer. Through the window behind her, I watch the sky darken, the fire's slow licking. That night, I will rise to a new moon, leave Lee sleeping on the floor, make my way to the smoldering mound, feel the ground warm beneath my bare feet. I will imagine for the first time a wild ride away, the mare young and alive beneath me. But when I awake, stiff and shivering, to the rough nudge of my father's boot, the dream is forgotten, the fire dead. I will turn from the charred cage of ribs to my chores, see in the distance the black scavengers at the bone pile, know they have already taken the eyes, preened the teeth for tongue. And this is what I will not forget: their raucous delight at such plenty, how they feed and feed, skull and femur fallen into strange symmetry-a stick horse running, honed and glistening, somehow new. Like the bones of an old song remembered. Like this story, whittled back to its beginnings, and at its heart the emptiness, the loss, that might tell you the whole of who I am. Who I am: Buddy Hope, once that child, now this man. The drunkard's son. Young brother of Lee. Nothing more or less until that summer of 1958, when Irene walked into my life, planted desire deep in my marrow, vines even now twining so that I rise each morning rooted in memory, unfolding to sun or snow but always to the absence of her. I abide in the whisper of wind through an old mare's bones. I exist in this place Irene made for me, surrounded by those she meant to love and shelter. I try each day to be more of the man she dreamed I might be. I dream, and still she is here with me, making me new again, giving me this story to tell, and the voice to tell it. Every word is her name. --from Finding Caruso by Kim Barnes, Copyright © 2003 by Kim Barnes, Published by The Putnam Publishing Group (a Marian Wood Book), a member of the Penguin Group (USA), Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher. Excerpted from Finding Caruso by Kim Barnes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.