Operation Wandering Soul

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Bob Shacochis

Winner of the American Book Award for his collection of stories Easy in the Islands and the Prix de Rome for The Next New World, Bob Shacochis returns to the islands with a first novel possessed of the same beauty as the places and people of the Caribbean. The volcano at the heart of the island of St. Catherine has smoldered as ominously and impotently as its politics for years, but lately things seem to be heating up. Mitchell Wilson, an American expatriate and economist for the Ministry of Agriculture, becomes unwittingly embroiled in an internecine war between rival factions of the government. Into this potentially eruptive scene enters a woman, Johanna, whom Mitchell once loved and lost but who remains an enchanting and powerful temptation - one he will not resist. At once a beguiling love story and a superbly sophisticated political novel about the fruits of imperialism in the twentieth century, Swimming in the Volcano is as brutally seductive a novel as the world it evokes. Triumphantly compassionate, and imbued with Shacochis's insight into human affairs that "ranks with the best of Conrad and Hemingway," here is a commanding performance by "one of the most talented young writers working in America today."

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Kent Haruf

A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl -- her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house -- is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known.From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together -- their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.From the Hardcover edition.

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Thom Jones

14 stories grouped into four parts: the horrors of Vietnam; men at war with women; the difficulties of divorce, mental defects, and the ravages of cancer; and battling epilepsy and alcoholism.

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Marilynne Robinson

Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by a canny young drifter and together they crafted a life on the run. Despite some petty violence and moments of desperation, their life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church -- the only available shelter from the rain -- and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand-to-mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. But despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life is laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to harmonize the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband that paradoxically judges those she loves.