The Road to Zena - Hardcover

Redon, Joel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312077912 ISBN 13: 9780312077914

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1992

Synopsis

Vivian Cochran, a handsome young farmer living in 1900 Zena, Oregon, is forced to decide among remaining on his grandfather's farm, going away to college, or running away with Mae Matthews, the local schoolteacher.

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Reviews

Following If Not on Earth, Then in Heaven , Redon's atmospheric second novel in a projected quartet depicting the lives of his ancestors opens on the small Oregon town of the title when the 20th century is less than a month old. Tracing the bumpy courtship of his great-grandparents, during which a number of people seem to play meddling matchmaker, Redon vividly evokes the feel of the era, a time when automobiles and telephones offer great possibility, but also destroy the charm of distance. Repetitions of details serve as leitmotifs, capturing the rhythms of life in the Northwest nearly a century ago. Colorful characters abound--there's the gossip, the wall-flower, the patriarch who is more at home with his Civil War memories than in the present. Although tragedy occurs (in the graphically described suicide of an alcoholic cousin), the novel's overall effect is of intense affection. While Redon's prose is merely serviceable, his leisurely narrative may put readers in mind of period chronicles of America by Tarkington and Wilder. But in its effort to capture the boundless energy and optimism of the era, this volume more precisely calls up the tone poems of Charles Ives and Aaron Copland.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A turgid coming-of-age saga--the second in a projected series of four novels (following If Not on Earth, Then in Heaven, 1991)- -set in rural Oregon at the turn of the century and drawn from Redon's exhaustive search into his own family's presence in that place and time. Shy hunk Vivian Cochran lives with his grandfather and doting spinster aunt in picturesque Zena, uncertain about his future as the old way of life appears to be giving way to progress. He opts to finish school so that he can go on to college like his friends, a choice made easier by the fact that Mae Matthews, the pretty young schoolteacher also living with her grandparents, is his age and attracted to him. By fits and starts a romance progresses, nearly stifled by mutual naivet‚ and miscommunication, until Mae leaves Zena to teach elsewhere and Vivian takes up football and his agricultural studies at a state college. Both miserable, the two decide it's better to live together than apart, and return to Zena to marry. Meanwhile, Vivian's grandfather, after grieving for his dead wife by loudly and imperiously reliving his Civil War and pioneer past, embraces the new age by marrying an admiring widow, and Mae's grandparents also come to terms with Zena's inevitable demise by moving to the city. In an extensive afterword, Redon charts his progress as he tracked down information about his family tree--but even though the original material has been dramatically enhanced, as an imaginative work its charms are fleeting. Colorful family history turned into a sensitive but overly precious love story--evocative in its sense of the period but tediously obsessive in detailing quirks of character. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A new century is beginning in the sleepy farm town of Zena, Oregon: "the old people distrusted it; motor cars and telephones were surely the end of a civilized society." Vivian toils on his grandfather's farm but plans to advance himself; he intends to leave soon for college. Then Viv meets the new schoolteacher, Mae. He is drawn to her at once; she is serious and self-assured, different from all the other young women of Zena. The story of Viv and Mae's love is the more appealing for being ordinary; Redon writes compellingly of the simple lives of these decent people and communicates the aching intensity of their young love. Place sustains and defines all the characters: "I'll always have a home here," says Vivian. The author based his novel on the real-life courtship of his great-grandparents, an act of familial piety that succeeds in every respect. Recommended.
- David Keymer, SUNY Inst. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312077912
• ISBN 13: 9780312077914
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292