On the Night Plain: A Novel - Hardcover

Lennon, J. Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805067221 ISBN 13: 9780805067224

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2001

Synopsis

A brave, beautifully written story about a man who reluctantly accepts his birthright in a hard-luck Montana sheep-ranching family, from the critically acclaimed author of The Light of Falling Stars.

Hoping to make a new life for himself after World War II and to escape the guilt he feels over the death of a brother who fought and died in his stead, Grant Person abandons his family's ranch in Montana for a fishing boat on the Atlantic. But the death of his mother three years later draws him back to the nearly deserted ranch. His father has mysteriously disappeared, and his only remaining brother, Max, a lifelong rival, takes off the day Grant returns, leaving Grant with a couple of hired hands, a sickly flock, and a pile of debt. Max comes home a year later, bringing with him a young woman named Sophia. As Grant falls in love with Sophia, he contemplates the possibility of a less isolated future. But Sophia is only happiness enough for one brother.

With unflinching honesty, J. Robert Lennon tackles the complications of love, loss, and work; loyalty to family, the land, and one's own desires; and the nature of solitude. Showing us the beauty of a bleak place, he redefines the notion of a life worth living.

About this title

About the Author

J. Robert Lennon is the author of The Light of Falling Stars and The Funnies. He lives with his wife and children in Ithaca, New York.

Reviews

The brutally hard life of sheep ranchers on the Great Plains just after WWII provides the heartbeat of Lennon's brooding third novel. As in his 1997 debut, The Light of Shooting Stars, Lennon laconically records the punishing hardships of the Western landscape, counterbalanced by the open skies that, one characters says, have "ruined us for any other kind of life." From the start, doom and ruin hang over the Person family. Three of the six sons of John and Asta Person are fated to die young. A fourth, Thornton, is killed in WWII, and Grant, the brother whose place Thornton took in the draft, bolts from the ranch and labors on a fishing trawler for three years. Meanwhile, his brother Max assumes his responsibilities and his mother dies; when Grant finally returns, he discovers that his father has taken off for parts unknown. A bitter and resentful Max then leaves, too, for New York, to paint. Grant copes with a mountain of debts, a sickly flock and elderly ranch hands. Lonely, taciturn and racked by guilt, Grant exists in a dour, gray world defined by monotonous labor and hard-bitten men. When Max returns with a young woman, Sophia, love suddenly erupts in Grant, presaging sibling rivalry and a dramatic denouement. While Grant's intensely inward personality and his existence on life's "chill periphery," may initially alienate the reader, Lennon artfully heightens the emotional temperature with Grant's recurrent, prefiguring dream of a dead man he saw in Atlantic City. Fiercely realistic descriptions suffuse Lennon's prose: "gulls dangled overhead, tufted and greasy like dead wool"; "the cod's caustic eye twitching against the caustic air." The result is a terse and haunting story that speaks of the inescapable bonds of blood, the ineluctable hold of the land and the healing powers of work and solitude.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Grant Person worked on the sheep ranch while his older brother went to fight in World War II and died on a troop ship. As soon as the war ends, Grant escapes from his isolated family ranch in the West and goes to sea on a fishing trawler. He returns years later, after receiving news of the death of his mother, only to find that his father has disappeared and the ranch is in disarray. He hopes to rebuild with the help of his younger brother Max, but then Max feels it is his turn to leave and goes to New York to become an artist. Life on the land is a constant struggle, but it and the seclusion hold their own rewards. When Max returns to the ranch with his girlfriend, Sophia, their presence threatens to destroy the balance--and the walls that Grant has erected around his life. Both muted and compelling, the novel examines the nature of work and isolation and, ultimately, redemption. Eric Robbins
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

It's clear from the first page of his quietly stunning third novel that Lennon doesn't intend to write the same book twice. This is a major departure from both the well-received The Light of Falling Stars, about the after-effects of a plane crash, and The Funnies, a wry look at a dysfunctional family. After World War II ends, Grant Person leaves his family's ranch on the Great Plains and heads for the East Coast. Behind him is the wreckage of a once-thriving family. Out of six brothers, only Grant and Max, his much younger brother, are left. Their mother's death three years later propels Grant home, and he finds the ranch fallen on hard times: his father is gone, and Max is on his way out the door to pursue his art. When Max returns the following year, he brings his girlfriend, whose presence sets up a disastrous conflict between the two men. Brotherly love gone bad, solitude turning to a rancid loneliness, the workings of fate, and a guilty conscience: this is the stuff of Greek tragedy, and Lennon does a masterly job of showing us a man who realizes that he is destined to "live a few scant miles from the heart of life, on its chill periphery." Highly recommended. Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

He went into their room. Max was curled on his side, his sleeping face buried in his hands. Sophia lay awake. She was sprawled on her back, their mother's dress flat against her body, the skirt folds draped down between her knees outlining the full length of her legs, and her face, polished to glass by the sweat of a nightmare, seemed not to recognize Grant at all. Her eyes followed him to the bedside. He took her burning hand from her belly and held it. The fingers lay limp in his and then her eyes closed and the fingers tightened, crushing Grant's bones together against his skin. His heart gulped blood. Max stirred. Grant released her and turned and went out to the truck to wait.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805067221
• ISBN 13: 9780805067224
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256