Going to the Sun - Softcover

McManus, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060928042 ISBN 13: 9780060928049

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1997

Synopsis

Seven years ago, Penny assisted in the suicide of her mortally wounded lover. Now, as she fights her own debilitating illness, she is haunted by her past and has entered a stasis in which she is incapable of emotional or sexual intimacy. As a way to break down the defenses she has built up in her safe Chicago life, she sets out on a cross-country bike tour. It is on this trip that she meets Ndele, a beautiful, mysterious black man who challenges her to confront her ghosts and decide whether to put her past behind her and live or succumb to the terrible uncertainties that plague even her dreams.

About this title

From the Publisher:

When Penelope Culligan agrees to accompany her boyfriend on a camping trip into the wilds of Alaska, so immersed is she in the first throes of love that she barely registers the dramatic majesty of the surrounding landscape. This landscape is brought rather harshly into relief, however, when her beloved David is savagely attacked by a grizzly bear.

David's horrifying accident -- and the chain of tragedies it sets into motion -- remains the defining incident of Penny's life. Seven years later, she is still traumatized: anguished by the details of David's attack, stalled in an unsatisfying academic program, unable to complete her Ph.D. dissertation. And now, Penny's own health is deteriorating, for she suffers from juvenile diabetes, a condition that threatens to halve her normal life expectancy, and whose chemical particulars -- insulin injections and blood sugar maintenance -- virtually control her behavior from hour to hour.

Haunted by her past and her future, Penny embarks on a cross-country bicycle trip back to Alaska, a pilgrimage she hopes will act as both a symbolic and literal emancipation. Temporarily free, Penny is at once exultant and vulnerable, newly open to the mysteries and wonders of the natural panorama, of her body's surprising physical stamina, of the compelling strangers she encounters. When she meets Nelson Rimes, a beautiful and enigmatic fellow traveler who is either the perfect catch or the perfect murder, Penny discovers that the defenses she's spent so many years constructing have very limited application out on the open road.

James McManus' extraordinary new novel is as riveting as it is disturbing, filled with the devastating insight and mordant wit, the emotional and erotic intensity that we have come to expect from McManus. A novel of astounding sweep and gravity, Going to the Sun is a triumph of action over stasis, of connection over isolation. McManus's Penny -- troubled yet hopeful, unflinching in her self-examination, full of a complex and utterly unsentimental courage -- is a moving and persuasive heroine on a remarkable journey of self-discovery.

About the Author:

James McManus is the author of three previous novels, a collection of stories; and a collection of poems, for which he has received fellowships from the Shifting and Guggenheim foundations, and twice from the National Endowment for the Arts.

His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Salmagundi, and in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1991 and 1994. He teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0060928042
• ISBN 13: 9780060928049
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 341