From Publishers Weekly
Michigan poet and novelist Harrison ( Sundog ; Dalva ) spins three novellas in this volume. In "Brown Dog," with its traits of an epic tall tale, B.D. is a rough-hewn, hard-drinking diver for an illegal scavenging firm who dredges up the body of an Indian from Lake Superior. Intending to sell the cadaver to a collector, he instead develops a filial bond with the Indian. B.D.'s weakness for fine women further entangles him with urbane anthropologist Shelley, yet he hankers for Rose, his earthy first love who threw pig swill at him. "Sunset Limited," contoured like a thriller, reunites four old friends, a "wild bunch" of '60s radicals once jailed for wrecking draft records, who, settled and affluent, must reassess their lives and relationships when called on to rescue an unregenerate ex-cohort from a Mexican jail. The title story depicts Clare, 50, in abrupt flight from her bigoted husband, hiding in an Iowa cornfield during a soul-searching night. In each novella the past rises up to challenge these deeply probed characters, forcing them to make moral choices.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
This collection of novellas depicts three very different locales and character types. Harrison is on familiar ground in Brown Dog, portraying the grimly comic adventures of a northern Michigan ne'er-do-well who discovers the body of an Indian chief beneath Lake Superior. In Sunset Limited, a group of former Sixties radicals struggle to make peace with their pasts as they come to the aid of a still-political friend. The title piece, a new direction for Harrison, involves a strong, complex female character who spends a night in an Iowa cornfield after leaving her husband at an interstate rest stop. Some harshly polemical passages mar Sunset Limited and a two-dimensional portrayal of the husband detracts from The Woman Lit by Fireflies. Nevertheless, much in these tales will satisfy and occasionally surprise Harrison's fans.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
