Stone Junction - Softcover

Dodge, Jim

4.09

2,829 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841954888 ISBN 13: 9781841954882

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2004

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Starting with his mother's 'roundhouse' right to a nun's jaw, Stone Junction is a modern odyssey of one man's quest for knowledge and understanding in a world where revenge, betrayal, revolution, mind-bending chemicals, magic and murder are the norm. With jaw-dropping scope, a stiletto-sharp wit and an array of utterly bizarre characters, Jim Dodge has woven a mesmerising and age-defining tale. Like a river constantly changing direction, Stone Junction is both stomach-clutching hilarious and heart-rendingly sad - but always utterly compelling. Prepare to step into a world where nothing is ever as it seems.

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From the Back Cover:

Stone Junction is a wise and wildly imaginative novel about Daniel Pearse, an orphaned child who is taken under the wings of the AMO-Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws. An assortment of sages sharpen Daniel's wide-eyed outlook until he has the concentration of a card shark Zen master, via apprenticeships in meditation, safecracking, poker, and the art of walking through walls. The AMO know wizards are made, not born, and this unconventional education sets Daniel on the trail of a strange, six-pound diamond sphere, held by the U.S. government in a New Mexico vault, rumored to be the Philosopher's Stone or the Holy Grail.

Shadowing the slippery netherworlds of role-playing games like Magic or Dungeons & Dragons, Daniel's quest to retrieve the magic stone and discover who killed his mother becomes a bravura act of storytelling, both a free-spirited adventure and a parable about the powers within us all.

"A post-psychedelic coming-of-age fable that's part Thomas Pynchon, part Tolkien, part Richard Brautigan, a story that owes as much to The Once and Future King as it does to Huckleberry Finn. Stone Junction is a rollicking, frequently surprising adventure-cum-fairy tale. It also has a sweetness about it and an indigenous American optimism, as if somewhere out there, beyond the shopping malls, Oz is waiting."-The New York Times Book Review

"Reading Stone Junction is like being at a nonstop party in celebration of everything that matters."-Thomas Pynchon

Jim Dodge is also the author of Fup and Not Fade Away.

About the Author:

Jim Dodge is the author of three novels - Fup, Not Fade Away and Stone Junction - and a collection of poetry and short prose, Rain on the River. He lives on an isolated ranch in western Sonoma County and has been by turns an apple picker, a carpet layer, a teacher, a professional gambler, a shepherd for five years and a woodcutter. He currently works as an environmental restorer - primarily tree planting, log-jam removal and erosion control.

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