Synopsis
A prequel to the Easy Rawlins mystery series finds a nineteen-year-old Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and his companion, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, on a perilous 1939 odyssey that takes them from Houston to a mysterious bayou world of voodoo, sex, revenge, and death. 150,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo. Tour. IP.
Reviews
Mosley's sixth Easy Rawlins novel is the chronological first?and less mystery or crime fiction than a powerfully raw, lyrical coming-of-age story. Here is 19-year-old Easy in 1939 before his war experiences and before his departure from Houston for L.A. Here, too, is Raymond Alexander, better known as Mouse, the most colorful and unpredictable series character. It's Mouse ("nuthin' but bad news wit' a grin") who uses a familiar blend of threats and bribes to pry Easy away from his uncertain job in Houston and onto the road in a borrowed '36 Ford. Their destination is desolate Pariah, Texas?Mouse's home once, and still home to his hated stepfather, Reese Corn. Along the way, they pick up a young couple running from trouble?not knowing that Mouse is worse trouble than any they've seen. Easy, drawn along in Mouse's wake, spends much of this novel in such a feverish state that his memories of his father are as real as the extraordinary people of Pariah?Momma Jo, the big, strong woman who lives alone in the swamp; her hunchbacked son, Domaque, whose literacy shames Easy; Miss Dixon, the white woman who owns Pariah. Encountering (sometimes precipitating) violent and unexpected threats, Easy and Mouse forge bonds that will link them in the decades that follow, though they choose very different paths. This late encounter with the early Easy offers an extra dimension to readers who have met, in previous stories, the man he grew to be. 150,000 first printing; author tour. (Jan.) FYI: Mosley, also published by Norton, chose Black Classic Press to bring out this novel to bolster the independent African American-owned press. Publisher W. Paul Coates will tour with Mosley to support this partnership.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Fans of Easy Rawlins who worry that he's been growing old too fast--Mosley's five novels from Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) to A Little Yellow Dog (p. 565) have carried him from 1948 to 1963--will be happy to have this prequel set in 1939, a slender coming-of-age story that takes Easy and his violent friend Raymond (Mouse) Alexander from their boyhood home in Houston's Fifth Ward to the aptly named town of Pariah, where Mouse plans to squeeze money out of his stepfather, Reese Corn, to underwrite his marriage to his sweetheart EttaMae. Easy, scared that Mouse will find out about the company he's been keeping with EttaMae, agrees to drive the car Mouse has swindled for the trip, and the two of them set off into a landscape dotted with hapless hitchhikers and seductive voodoo queens, hard men, willing women, and hellfire preachers--most with unforgettable stories to tell. By the time Easy heads back for Houston, Mouse will have gotten his money, Easy will have lost whatever innocence he had in ``my real war'' before the white man's war of 1941, and Mosley's vast audience will have learned that ``life was so hard that we were too tired from just living to lend a hand.'' No mystery, but a densely imagined prologue that goes a long way toward explaining why Easy spends so much of his adult life hamstrung by his deepest loyalties, as if every friendship were a life sentence. (First printing of 150,000; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
There can be no better way to start off the year than with Easy Rawlins. Fans already needing a fix after Mosley's recent A Little Yellow Dog (LJ 6/1/96), get happy: Easy and Mouse are back in this "prequel" to the series. This latest novel, actually Mosley's original Easy/Mouse story, written in the late 1980s but never released, follows the classic search-for-father motif?literally for Mouse and figuratively for the 19-year-old Easy, who finds himself a very un-Easy rider on a road trip to Pariah, Texas, to strong-arm Mouse's stepdaddy Reese for money. Easy quickly lands up to here in trouble that includes witchcraft, fevered sex, a fleeing killer, and a few dead bodies. While Mouse is facing down his wicked stepfather, Easy must exorcise the demons of his own past in order to achieve a coming of age that's steeped in blood, guilt, and forgiveness. Not a straight mystery like earlier volumes in the series, Gone Fishin' is a more spiritual novel that reaches into the characters' pasts to reveal their souls. Mosley delivers the goods every time, and Easy fans are going to eat this up. Highly recommended. [For an interview with Walter Mosley, see "Small Presses in the Black," p. 144.]?Michael Rogers, "Library Journal.
-?Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Mosley has elected to publish this prequel to his acclaimed Easy Rawlins mystery series with a small press specializing in the work of African American authors. Committed to the idea that well-known black writers have a unique opportunity to help smaller black presses establish themselves in the general trade market, he hopes that this venture will serve as a model for further such collaborations. Fortunately, the book itself is worthy of the project. Written before the other Rawlins novels but never published, it takes Easy and his lethal friend Mouse back to Texas before World War II and their subsequent move to Los Angeles. The 19-year-old Easy is a recognizable but very different character from the survivor we've come to know in the later books: illiterate, grieving his absent father, scraping by on the moment-to-moment pleasures of drink and sex, the young Easy knows little of the larger world. His journey to awareness begins with a soul-changing road trip to the bayous of Pariah, Texas, where Mouse hopes to settle a score with his hated stepfather. What takes place is part thriller and part coming-of-age novel, and it works fine on both levels. More important, though, it contains the beginnings of what would become Mosley's special gift: the ability to vivify African American life by placing fully individualized characters in a specific historical moment. The young Easy, beginning to summon the courage he needs to escape the poverty and violence of his prewar, rural South environment, stands on his own without the help of the later books, but for those who know the series, this short novel opens a treasured window into the past of a very good friend. Bill Ott
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