Music of the Swamp - Hardcover

Nordan, Lewis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0945575769 ISBN 13: 9780945575764

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1991

Synopsis

Sugar, a little boy growing up in the 1950s, encounters death in its many forms as he discovers a dead man in the swamp, digs up a dead woman from under the house, and sits on a dead druggist in the drugstore

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“This is not merely a stellar book. It is absolute ballad put to page.”*

Lewis Nordan’s fiction invents its own world--always populated by madly heroic misfits. In Music of the Swamp, he focuses his magic and imagination on a boy’s utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father--a man who attracts bad luck like a magnet. Nordan evokes ten-year-old Sugar Mecklin’s world with dazzling clarity: the smells, the tastes, and most surely the sounds of life in this peculiar, somewhat bizarre, Delta town. Sugar discovers that what his daddy says is true: “The Delta is filled up with death”; but he also finds an endless supply of hope.

An ALA Notable Book
A Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award

“Conjures up a Southern-fried childhood that’s as dark, hilarious and affecting as any you’re likely to encounter.” ―The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Nordan provoke[s] a cringe of pain right after the belly laugh. His books . . . are very funny and deep-down sad, stirring up great heaps of emotion.” ―New York Newsday

“A bittersweet melody syncopated with sadness relieved by moments of all-too-human comedy . . . ‘There is great pain in all love,’ Sugar eventually concludes, ‘but we don’t care, it’s worth it.’ Mr. Nordan’s enchanting Music of the Swamp bears poignant witness to that truth.” ―The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Nordan introduces a group of characters as wild and woolly, as unpredictable, outrageous and violence-prone as the land that spawns them.” ―Chicago Tribune

“Like a hypnotic Bessie Smith ballad, Nordan’s book bids you listen.” ―*Southern Living

About the Author:

Lewis Nordan was a professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh for many years and the author of seven books of fiction and a memoir. His awards include three American Library Association Notable Book citations, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for fiction, the Mississippi Authors Award for fiction, and the Southern Book Critics Award for fiction. He died in 2012.

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0945575769
• ISBN 13: 9780945575764
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 210