American Meteor

" Norman Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights." --NPR

In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny--the second stand-alone book in The American Novels series--Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.

By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America's fabulous and murderous history.

Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage and radio plays. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 06/09/2015
ISBN: 9781934137949
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.00w x 0.60d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 12/01/2014
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2015
Booklist 05/01/2015 pg. 78
Library Journal 06/01/2015 pg. 91
Shelf Awareness 06/30/2015
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/02/2015 pg. 28