The Lost Get-Back Boogie - Softcover

Burke, James Lee

4.15

2,732 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786889349 ISBN 13: 9780786889341

Publisher: Hyperion, 1997

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Iry Paret is a young blues musician trying to put the past behind him. Having served time for killing a man in a barroom brawl, Iry heads west to make a fresh start, where he settles on a Bitteroot Valley ranch with Frank and his son Buddy, Iry's old prison friend. But just as Iry's new life is establishing itself, Frank is getting in too deep. Iry tries to remain uninvolved, but his passion for a woman pulls him in. Now he must determine how far he will go and how much he is willing to risk to help a friend.

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About the Author:

James Lee Burke is the author of twenty-three novels and one collection of short stories. Two books, Heaven's Prisoners and Two for Texas, were adapted as motion pictures. Over the years, he has also worked as a pipeliner, land surveyor, social worker, newspaper reporter, and creative writing teacher. A native of Houston, he grew up on the Louisiana-Texas coast and now divides his time between New Iberia, Louisiana, and Missoula, Montana.

Christine Wiltz, a native New Orleanian, is the author of three mysteries featuring the Irish Channel detective Neal Rafferty, the novel Glass House, and the nonfiction work The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld. She co-wrote and -produced the PBS documentary Backlash: Race and The American Dream, about David Duke and his followers, which aired at the time of the gubernatorial runoff between Duke and Edwin Edwards.

From Publishers Weekly:

This wonderful novel about a Korean War veteran released in the '60s from a Louisiana prison farm where he served a term for manslaughter is neither roman tic nor cynical in its realism. Loner Iry Paret, a country-and-western musician, has survived two years of hacks, trustees and dangerous inmates, not with hope but with a dull, gloomy attentiveness that has written hardship's effects all over him. Once he is paroled, he drinks liquor as if it were a tonic, but even drinking brings no joy. He travels to a fellow prisoner's ranch, and as he heads west, the air clears. His involvement with his acid-dropping pal Buddy Rior dan, Buddy's stoical ex-cowboy father (who feuds with a foul-odored pulpmill) and Buddy's estranged wife, Beth, tugs him between adjustment to straight life and the battles that may send him back to jail. Although the ending strays, this latest novel by the author of The Convict is pensive and cautiously paced. It also contrasts two very different parts of the essence of Americathe hazy bayou and a resolute valley in the beautiful West.
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