Faraway Places - Hardcover

Spanbauer, Tom

3.91

397 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399133615 ISBN 13: 9780399133619

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1988

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A tale of blood ties, budding friendship, coming of age, and revenge, set in Idaho in the early 1950s, focuses on thirteen-year-old Jacob Weber, whose eyes are opened to the diverse ways of life, including murder

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About the Author:

Tom Spanbauer was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho. Not really. The Princess Theater wasn’t anymore by the time he came on the scene. He went to Catholic School until the eighth grade and then to Pocatello High School, then graduated from the newly finished Highland High. Five years at Idaho State University and he received a BA in English with a minor in German. In 1969 Tom went into the Peace Corps and he spent two years in Kenya, East Africa. Then came the 70s and the Married Years in Boise, Idaho. In 1978, Tom set himself free and moved to New England, then Key West, the finally settled in New York City for seven years. Tom, a survivor of AIDS, has lived and worked in Portland for fifteen years where he teaches Dangerous Writing. His novels include Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City of Shy Hunters, and Now Is The Hour.

From Publishers Weekly:

The soft caress of a February chinook across harsh Iowa fields sets the tone of this finely wrought first novel about events occurring in Jake Weber's early adolescence. The observant and solitary only child of a taciturn father and quiet, religious mother, Jake disobeys their injunction against swimming in the river and, in doing so, witnesses the murder of a local Indian woman by Harold Endicott, who owns the mortgage on the Weber farm. Jake tells his parents what he's seen, but his father insists they say nothing, even as the woman's lover, a black man, is accused of the crime and flees. That summer, Jake sees the black man at the state fair and by speaking to him begins to make amends in his own heart. Soon after, Jake's father loses the farm and, in a drunken rage, accosts Endicott. The black man and Jake rescue the youth's father and, with the help of Endicott's five Dobermans, wreak their own revengebut at great personal cost. Balancing Jake's sensitivity against the harsh reality of farm life in the '50s, Spanbauer tells his short, brutal story with delicacy and deep respect for place and character. Forceful and moving, this novel is a promising debut.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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