"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Hadrian's foil and lifelong friend is Sonny Hope, the blustery and conniving prison director. In one of the book's many ironies, Sonny owes more than a slight portion of his success to Hadrian, who, while committing a defensible killing at age 15, leaves Sonny's character unsullied--and blows his own defense--by simply not revealing that his friend witnessed the incident. Thus, while Hadrian is sentenced to years behind bars, alone with the budding realization that he has sacrificed himself for Sonny's happiness, his friend succeeds despite himself, eventually rising to prison director. When, after 15 years, Hadrian kills yet again and then miraculously escapes confinement, he and Sonny start an entirely new sort of cat-and-mouse game: Sonny pardons him, Hadrian returns to Shepherdsville, and a chilling game of who-owes-what-to-whom ensues.
Draper masterfully unveils the petty politics and small-town intrigue of a town dominated by a correctional facility. The book's greatest strength, however, is the fraught interplay between Hadrian and Sonny, who move as though caught in each other's orbit. It's Hadrian's story in the end, though, as he struggles to see if he's more than what Sonny has created--and more than he himself thought. --Ben Guterson
"A strong vein of humor runs through it . . . Draper [has an] admirable ability to populate his compelling novel with vibrant characters."
--Booklist (starred review)
"In his cool, prosaically loping fiction debut, Texas journalist Draper easily entraps the reader in a Lone Star State prison town . . . [Hadrian's Walls] provides sooty, ragged, fearsome reading pleasure. . . . A breezy encounter with human darkness, carried on by the lilt of Draper's choice prose."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Robert Draper has made an exciting debut. He's got a good ear for the tones of the region and a sharp sense of how the oppressiveness of it adds its weight to the actual oppression that is his theme. I hope he finds many readers."
--Larry McMurtry, author of Duane's Depressed
"Hadrian's Walls is a great, smart read set in a world few readers ever encounter. The novel rings with truth from the dark sloughs of East Texas to the burning, corrupt cells of the Texas prison system, from the joys of a childhood friendship to the adult complexities. I found Hadrian's Walls to be a wonderful read."
--James Crumley
"[A] scorching, Faustian first novel . . . Draper skillfully balances his stark portrayal of Shepherdsville's environs and feckless inhabitants with the affecting drama that unfolds among the central characters. His ambitious novel explores the irony, pathos and contradictions both of freedom vs. captivity and of good vs. evil."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With its lowdown, dirty mythic melodrama of a plot and hardluck honey of a hero, Hadrian's Walls would be worth reading if it were just a pageturner. But it also has the top three elements of truly great fiction: the writing, the writing, the writing. I'd say the next major Texas novelist is in the building."
--Marion Winik, author of The Lunch-Box Chronicles
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