The Sound of the Trees: A Novel - Softcover

Gatewood, Robert Payne; Gatewood, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312421885 ISBN 13: 9780312421885

Publisher: Picador, 2003

Synopsis

In the American Southwest, in 1930, Trude Mason and his mother ride out into the predawn quiet, hoping to escape Trude's brutal, violent father and an equally violent past. They plan on reaching Colorado, a place they believe holds the biggest ranches, the most limitless promise, and lives of the greatest ease. What Trude finds in a small border town in New Mexico, however, is brutality and lawlessness in the form of a cruel, pitiless sheriff and his devoted posse. When they arrest and sentence to death a young woman whose life Trude has saved, he must endure an explosive collision between conscience and self-preservation.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Gatewood lives in New Mexico. The Sound of the Trees was a Book Sense 76 pick and is his first novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Taking its title from a Robert Frost poem, this engrossing, lyrical novel marks the debut of a writer of great promise. Set during the Depression, the narrative follows 18-year-old Trude Mason as he takes his mother and flees on horseback from his abusive alcoholic father, leaving behind their foreclosed New Mexican ranch for the high country of Colorado. After mourning his mother's death from a rattlesnake bite and braving incredible hardships not the least of which is the approaching winter Trude is bushwhacked and stabbed by an Englishman traveling with a beautiful black girl who is his captive. Eventually, Trude makes his way to a fledgling frontier town where a sinister mayor holds sway. The ambitious mayor dreams of parlaying the coming of the railroad into the creation of a dominant center of commerce on the western frontier, elevating himself to political prominence. Trude discovers that the girl, Delilah, is also in town and has been jailed for the theft of a rake. His thwarted attempts to free her evolve into a classic David and Goliath struggle. When an Eastern magazine writer comes to town, the power-crazed mayor decides to hang Delilah, sending a message to the world that the town is ruled by law and by him. The boy's desperate and heroic struggle against time and insurmountable odds invests the denouement with gut-wrenching tension. At times repetitive and marred by off-key imagery Delilah's hair "fell past her shoulders like nests of stone"; the mayor's boots "sprang from the floor like hand-rubbed coals" this is nevertheless an uncommonly good first novel, strongly evocative of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312421885
• ISBN 13: 9780312421885
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304