Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Rodin's Debutante

Rodin's Debutante

Just, Ward

Paperback

Mystery & ThrillerGeneral Fiction

ISBN10: 0547752652
ISBN13: 9780547752655
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: Apr 17 2012
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.60 Width: 5.20 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
Ward Just is not merely America's best political novelist. He is America's greatest living novelist.--Susan Zakin, Lithub

An achievement . . . [that] fuses the romanticism of the early Kerouac and his mentor, Thomas Wolfe, with the wry humor of Richard Yates.--New York Times Book Review

Tommy Ogden, an outsized character holding court in his mansion outside robber-baron-era Chicago, declines to give his wife the money to commission a bust of herself from the French master Auguste Rodin, and instead announces his intention to endow a boys' school. His decision reverberates years later in the life of Lee Goodell, whose coming of age is at the heart of Ward Just's emotionally potent novel.

Lee's life in the small town of New Jesper, Illinois, is irrevocably changed by the rape of one of his high school classmates. His father, a local judge and a member of the Committee of civic leaders that runs the town, votes to suppress the crime in the name of protecting their community. His mother responds by forcing a move to Chicago's North Shore, where Lee enrolls in the private Ogden Hall School for Boys. Both the crime and the school come to profoundly shape Lee's knowledge of how the world works. Years later, Lee meets his victimized classmate. Their charged encounter is a confirmation of his understanding that how and what we remember lies at the heart of life.

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