Surveyor - Hardcover

Hawkes, G. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1878448811 ISBN 13: 9781878448811

Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub, 1998

Synopsis

A lifelong friendship of two surveyors is rocked when a team of archaeologists and a young film student intrude on their silent and solitary world

About this title

Review

Something's bothering John Swope, a one-legged sculptor and veteran of the Korean War. He is insisting on paying up all his old bogus gambling debts and the crazy bets he lost (like the one where his desert buddy, Paul, guessed the exact height--to an inch--of a mesa). But what's bugging him? John and Paul, best friends, have been surveying a piece of the New Mexican desert for almost 30 years, working for the mysterious Foundation. For what--or whom--they've never known. They've drifted into lassitude, taking creative liberties with their surveying. "We add mesas and draws and sometimes whole mountain ranges, and we change the courses of rivers. It doesn't much matter to us anymore where we put things."

But underneath the nonchalance looms some menace. Mysteries begin to accumulate, as do an assortment of strangers compelled to the desert--Caliope, who's building a desert town designed to be washed away; the Dinosaur Men--archaeologists in search of ancient bone. When the two crusty surveyors discover that their measurements and readings taken in the past are incorrect, more seems to be shifting than the land's contours.

The descriptions of landscape are worth the price of this slim novel. "It's blue in the evening, and then purple again, and then black, as if all the day's shadows had collected themselves for the next day's inevitable explosion." G.W. Hawkes writes a prose both clipped and lyrical; he creates memorable characters with a few deft strokes. Surveyor is a novel sparsely yet lyrically written about friendship and the impact that mysterious intrusions into their desert world brings. --Hollis Giammatteo

About the Author

G.W.Hawkes co-directs the creative writing program at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. He has published two previous novels Surveyor and Semaphore as well as two short story collections, Spies in the Blue Smoke and Playing Out of the Deep Woods. He has also had short stories published in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and GQ.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1878448811
• ISBN 13: 9781878448811
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 250