SOUTHERN CROSS THE DOG - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed, Dated (Shortly After Publication) , And Inscribed ("Lined") by Bill Cheng

Cheng, Bill

ISBN 10: 0062225006 / ISBN 13: 9780062225009

Published by New York City, NY: Ecco Press, 2013, 2013

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 325 pages. Published in 2013. The author's breakthrough debut novel. One of the most important literary debuts of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Bill Cheng's "Southern Cross The Dog". Quirkily titled, epically evoked, beautifully written. "The bonds between three childhood friends are upended by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. In its aftermath, one young man must choose between the lure of the future and the claims of the past. Having lost virtually everything in the fearsome storm - home, family, first love - Robert Chatham embarks on an odyssey that takes him through the Deep South. Teeming with language that renders both the savage beauty and complex humanity of our shared past, a tour-de-force that heralds the arrival of a major new voice" (Publisher's blurb). Despite its accessible prose, it is a demanding (but rewarding) read. Hailed by critics as our "Southern Gothic" novelist, the successor to Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy; the only other contemporary writer of comparable ambition and stature is Philipp Meyer ("American Rust"). An absolute "must-have" title for Bill Cheng collectors. This copy is very densely and beautifully signed, dated (shortly after publication), and inscribed ("lined") in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "5/20/13 'I look on you and I'm the one who has been left behind. Sometimes I can glimpse the world in which you live. It's a place better than this one - where our sons still live, and we are young, and your husband is a better man, and not this damned fool beside you, holding out his nigger heart'. Bill Cheng". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is the only such signed, post-publication dated, and inscribed ("lined") copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. One of the most brilliant American novelists of our time. A fine copy. ISBN 0062225006. Seller Inventory # 20294

Bibliographic Details

Title: SOUTHERN CROSS THE DOG - Rare Pristine Copy ...

Publisher: New York City, NY: Ecco Press, 2013

Publication Date: 2013

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

In the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor, Bill Cheng’s Southern Cross the Dog is an epic literary debut in which the bonds between three childhood friends are upended by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. In its aftermath, one young man must choose between the lure of the future and the claims of the past.
 
Having lost virtually everything in the fearsome storm—home, family, first love—Robert Chatham embarks on an odyssey that takes him through the deep South, from the desperation of a refugee camp to the fiery and raucous brothel Hotel Beau-Miel and into the Mississippi hinterland, where he joins a crew hired to clear the swamp and build a dam.

Along his journey he encounters piano-playing hustlers, ne’er-do-well Klansmen, well-intentioned whores, and a family of fur trappers, the L’Etangs, whose very existence is threatened by the swamp-clearing around them. The L’Etang brothers are fierce and wild but there is something soft about their cousin Frankie, possibly the only woman capable of penetrating Robert’s darkest places and overturning his conviction that he’s marked by the devil.

Teeming with language that renders both the savage beauty and complex humanity of our shared past, Southern Cross the Dog is a tour de force that heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2013: Eight-year-old Robert Chatham has lost everything--friends, family, home--to the fast waters of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. He lights out across the country, a refugee seeking shelter with (and from) a Homer-esque cast of misfits, hucksters, and ne’er-do-wells: the ladies of a “hotel” of ill repute; a piano player whose talent for the blues matches his seemingly supernatural powers of healing; a close-knit clan of trappers, living in a swampland itself marked for flood behind the wall of a WPA dam. Wherever he finds himself, Robert is gripped and propelled by his fear of a devil closing in behind him. The book’s lineage is clear--the ghosts of O’Connor and Faulkner stalk these pages--but pigeonholing Bill Cheng’s remarkable debut as a Southern Gothic shortchanges the power and originality of its language, the artfulness of its voice. Cheng has written a Bildungsroman of the South, a tale of a country submerged again and again--literally and otherwise--under the high tides of the 20th century. --Jon Foro