Fiction
328 Pages
ISBN: 0-910055-81-5
Paper $15.95 |
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The second volume in Terry Davis' celebrated coming-of-age trilogy, Mysterious Ways offers us a fresh and penetrating view of how perilous it can be simply to grow up. Holden Caulfield comes to mind immediately, but Davis' protagonist, Karl Russell, travels a longer road, darkened by the death of his family, the shadow of the Vietnam War, and a mysterious malady that transforms his life. Written in day book form, covering the most significant six months of the narrator's life, the tone of the text moves from wide-eyed, small town "gosh" to a worldly and mature inquiry into the nature of meaning and the textures of fate. With its sudden descent into physical and spiritual peril, Mysterious Ways provides a startling addition to the bildungsroman tradition in American literature: a new definition of beauty. For the swiftness and clarity of its prose, for its unique and unforgettable narrator, and for the many other gifts it offers, this novel will be read for decades.
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