Sun Going Down: A Novel - Hardcover

Todd, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416550488 ISBN 13: 9781416550488

Publisher: A Touchstone Book, 2008

Synopsis

Follows four generations of an American frontier family as inspired by the letters and diaries of the author's ancestors, in a tale that traces the experiences of the Paints, from Civil War-era Ebenezer through his Depression-era great-grandchildren. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Todd is the author of the novels Sun Going Down and Come Again No More and the memoir Desertion, which won the Quebec Writer’s Federation First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction. Visit his website at www.jacktoddtheauthor.com.

Reviews

Three generations of the Paint family struggle through 70 years of hardship and heartache on the Western plains in Todd's ambitious fiction debut. En route from Mississippi to the Dakota Territory at the height of the Civil War, Ebenezar Paint meets and marries twice-widowed Cora, a union that produces two strapping twin boys, Eli and Ezra. Ebenezer vainly chases riches; by 15, the boys are orphans and cowboys—and involved in a risky but profitable bit of horse stealing. Ezra remains a wanderer, while Eli settles down to become a wealthy rancher. The narrative eventually follows Eli's favorite daughter of his six children: Velma, who is brutalized by two of her three husbands, but whose estrangement from Eli causes her the most pain, and takes the story into the Depression era. Vivid and colorful in its depiction of the West's transformation from the frontier to the modern age, this is a hardscrabble tale of proud folks who refuse to forgive mistakes or forget faults. Todd's previous book was Desertion, a memoir of his 1969 desertion from the U.S. Army and his resettlement in Canada. He gives this epic story, which an afterword notes is based on the lives of relatives, pulpy sweep and palpable anguish. (May)
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This sprawling epic of the American west opens in the Civil War, with young Ebeneezer Paint running goods up and down the Mississippi River. From there, Todd tracks the Paint clan across four generations, all the way up into the beginning of the Great Depression. It takes a generation or so for the story to really gain its footing, and it is most compelling in the details of the hardscrabble life the Paints endured. As Todd based parts of the book and many of the characters on his own ancestors and their memoirs, some of the plotlines feel dutifully included rather than organic, and for all the time spent with the Paints, you never really get to know them all that well. At the same time, knowing that the folk who struck out into an untamed west and made it America lived these very lives is a thrill in itself. This is an impressive, grand work that wants to sit next to Lonesome Dove, and although it doesn’t capture the same scale, even mentioning them in the same breath should be telling enough. --Ian Chipman

Edition details

• Publisher: A Touchstone Book
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1416550488
• ISBN 13: 9781416550488
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 467