The Ballad of Pinewood Lake - Softcover

Sherman, Jory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812588797 ISBN 13: 9780812588798

Publisher: Forge Books, 2002

Synopsis

Writing pseudo-journalistic stories about a war he’d never seen was filling Johnnie Paul’s pockets, but breaking his heart. He had dreams, and to fulfill those dreams he had to leave behind the city where he worked, and go to a place where he could write fiction, fiction from the heart. Life in Pinewood Lake gave Johnnie the chance to deal with his ill wife and become close to his young son. But all too soon Johnnie learns that the country does not change the person. Confronting the dark currents of the human mind, Johnnie comes to recognize his own inability to distinguish between the ideal and reality. And how in one tragic moment, that ideal can be destroyed.

About this title

About the Author

Jory Sherman is a widely published author and poet whose works have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He is the author of many novels, several of which have won major literary awards, including the Western Writer’s of America’s Spur Award for The Medicine Horn. He has been abducted into the Writers Hall of Fame.

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for his epic westerns, Sherman (Grass Kingdom) takes a radical detour from his usual trail of rustlers and ranchers in his 10th novel. Set in the mountains of Southern California in the 1990s, this gloomy story follows a young family's downward spiral of alcoholism and self-destruction. Johnnie Paul is a pulp writer who flees the Los Angeles rat race, seeking sanctuary on the shores of Pinewood Lake in the mountains northeast of the city. Johnnie is a hack: he writes bad poetry and fabricates "true" stories for men's adventure magazines. He dreams of writing a great novel, but deep inside he knows he won't. His wife, Angela, is an alcoholic whose first husband was killed in a skydiving accident. The couple and their young son, Colin, think they are safe in the mountains, but the demons that drove them there can't be outrun. The idyllic image of Pinewood Lake is, in fact, a brittle facade: the folks there are petty, jealous, usually drunk and always dysfunctional--not an ideal environment for a family already on the edge. Sherman's portrayal of Johnnie and Angela is poignant, and Johnnie's narration starkly reveals the pain and torture of alcoholism and doomed love. No matter how much they both pretend to believe in the future, life does get worse, and tragedy finally pushes them over the edge. Sherman's characters and his powerful delivery grip the reader in an uncomfortable clinch until the final page. Despite a heavy-handed prose style, literarily this is Sherman's most ambitious novel to date.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0812588797
• ISBN 13: 9780812588798
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192