A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

April 18, 2016
Brown’s contemplative fourth novel dissects ideas about grief, loss, and the thin line between sanity and madness. Henry Garrett, a middle-aged former high school teacher, has fled New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, seeking refuge in a Virginia motel. Its owner, Latangi, befriends Henry, and through their conversations the reader learns that Latangi’s husband, Mohit, has recently died. Mohit has left behind a vast masterwork, an epic poem that his wife asks Henry to read. Meanwhile, Henry hopes to reconcile with both his estranged wife, Amy, and his sister, Mary. Through memories and flashbacks his problematic relationships with both women are slowly revealed, along with details of his troubled upbringing. Just when Henry seems at his lowest ebb, things get even worse, but unfolding events seem to offer him a revived sense of purpose that gradually leads him back from the precipice. The author methodically conveys a sense of time and place, weaving in references to Kate Chopin’s classic 19th-century novel set in New Orleans, The Awakening, and vivid descriptions of the city in the wake of the 2005 hurricane. Brown (Audubon’s Watch) is an expert storyteller, and his latest only further reinforces that claim. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM Partners.

April 15, 2016
Natural disaster combines with accident to make a wreckage of a life. Now, in the sympathetic hands of the long-absent Brown (Audubon's Watch, 2001, etc.), it's up to the protagonist to pick up the pieces. Henry Garrett has been on the run, headlong, for days, fleeing New Orleans and the terror of Hurricane Katrina. Now, down in the quiet shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, he rolls to an uncertain stop smack in the middle of the life of a "short, round Indian woman," her glittery fingernails disguising a badly broken heart. Latangi takes him in without hesitation, knowing only that he has been driven from a home that may no longer exist--and certainly not knowing that the 41-year-old was "deep down, still just a dopey adolescent kid" when it comes to matters of the heart and deeply troubled when it comes to matters of the mind. Indeed, one of the things that Henry is running from is the possibility of inherited madness ("undone," in the polite parlance of the South). But what has become of his wife and other loved ones? What is there to run toward? Henry is working on sorting all that out even as he accidentally kills an old prisoner working on a road crew, his arms raised "as if what he meant to do...was fly." Putting an already unhinged fellow under additional stress is never a recipe for happiness, but Henry struggles to work it out, finding comfort in the sometimes-eccentric but deeply hospitable people of Amherst County. Henry yearns not for having "his mind set right" but for resumption, the ability to pick up his dreams where they left off, make peace with family, and get on with life. Thanks to the resourceful, gentle Latangi, who has troubles of her own, he gets there. Populated by likable and believable characters, an affectionate, understated approach to questions of sanity, survival, and redemption.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2016

His marriage, inheritance, and teaching job now in the past, Henry Garrett leaves post-Katrina New Orleans and keeps driving until he reaches small-town Virginia and the Ganesha Hotel. Soon he's in the midst of an accidental killing, comforting the bereaved and uncovering an epic Indian love poem. Lyndhurst Prize winner Brown gets a 40,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.