The Smallest Color - Hardcover

Roorbach, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582431523 ISBN 13: 9781582431529

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2001

Synopsis

The thirty-year-old secret about what happened to his older brother haunts Coop Henry, but when cracks begin to form in the family's tight facade, he will be forced to confront the truth. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Roorbach is the author of three previous books, including Big Bend, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. He has taught at Ohio State and the University of Maine and now lives in western Maine with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

Roorbach has quietly built a stellar reputation based on short fiction (Big Bend, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award) and nonfiction (Writing Life Stories; Summers with Juliet), but has escaped wider notice perhaps because he hadn't produced a novel. Now he has, and it's a good one. Coop Henry is a former Olympic skier, a man steering his way through what most would call a good life he's a coach with the U.S. Ski Team; has a smart, beautiful wife, Madeline; and lives along a Colorado river straight out of a magazine spread. Problem is, the hazy days of the late '60s keep coming back to him, especially the summer of 1969, when Coop was 15 and his older brother, Hodge, an underground radical, disappeared forever. Coop knows that Hodge is dead, but exactly how that death occurred overwhelms Coop with the past, even as his current life disintegrates. Complicating things, he has kept the news of Hodge's death from his parents for 30 years, telling them that Hodge is hiding from the FBI. It's hard to know who's a better creation: Coop, a thoughtful man in search of wholeness, or Hodge, all charisma and violence, "someone who'd get in bed with your girl." Roorbach is equally at home among the ski bums of the present day and the hippie bums of a previous era, especially those who wanted to "Stop the War" by starting their own. This is a piercing novel, one that perfectly captures the seismic upheaval of the end of the '60s. (Oct.)Forecast: A long list of blurbers Colin Harrison, Rick Moody, Richard Russo, Antonya Nelson and Melanie Rae Thon among them attests to Roorbach's popularity in literary circles. His first novel may win him a wider popular readership.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In this exploration of the long reaches of the Vietnam War, Roorbach attempts to understand the past by answering Delmore Schwarz's poetic question, "What am I now that I was then?" Protagonist Coop Henry, a trainer with the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, feels himself to be at the end of a very bad run. Henry is living a lie. For 30 years, he has hidden from his parents the fact that his older brother, who vanished in 1969 to dodge the draft, is not still alive and in hiding but has been long dead--"and worse." What that "worse" is forms the chief question of the book, which scuttles between a third-person account of the Henry family in 1969 and Coop's diarylike conversations with his dead brother. The effect, for the reader, of listening in on Coop's confessions and glimpsing his tortured consciousness is both unsettling and powerful. A compelling coming-of-middle-age novel. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Coop Henry is a champion skier, a complacent husband settling into middle age, and a son burdened by a terrible secret: 30 years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, Coop's older brother Hodge disappeared after bombing an airplane factory. Coop has told everyone that his brother is dead, but his parents suspect that Hodge is alive and are demanding to see him before their 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Only Coop and his wife, Madeline, know what really happened, and they have sworn never to reveal the truth. The burden of the secret threatens Coop's marriage, costs him a plum job as U.S. Ski Team coach, strains his relationship with his parents, and complicates a budding romance with a younger woman. Author of an award-winning short-story collection, Big Bend, and two works of nonfiction, Roorbach deftly weaves together Coop's past and present lives in alternating chapters as he remembers the summer of 1969, his own teenage rebellion against his parents, and his lingering feelings of guilt over his role in the events that led to his brother's vanishing. This first novel brilliantly and compassionately recalls the turbulence of the Sixties as well as the violent yet idealistic fringes of the antiwar movement. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Karen Anderson, Quarles & Brady/Streich Lang, Phoenix
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582431523
• ISBN 13: 9781582431529
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336