East of Denver
Gregory Hill, 2011
Penguin Group USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13:9780142196885
Summary
Winner, 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel
Mixing pathos and humor in equal measure, East of Denver is an unflinching novel of rural America, a poignant, darkly funny tale about a father and son finding their way together as their home and livelihood inexorably disappears.
When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams arrives at his family’s farm in eastern Colorado to bury a dead cat, he finds his widowed and senile father, Emmett living in squalor. He has no money, the land is fallow, and a local banker has cheated his father out of the majority of the farm equipment and his beloved Cessna.
With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare suddenly finds himself caretaker to both his dad and the farm, and drawn into an unlikely clique of old high school classmates: Vaughn Atkins, a paraplegic confined to his mother’s basement; Carissa McPhail, an overweight bank teller who pitches for the local softball team; and longtime bully D. J. Beckman, who now deals drugs throughout small-town Dorsey. Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot with his father and his fellow gang of misfits to rob the very bank that has stolen their future.
East of Denver is a remarkably assured, sharply observed, and utterly memorable debut. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Jose, Colorado, USA
• Education—University of Colorado, Boulder
• Awards—2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado
Gregory Hill was raised in Joes Colorado, which he calls "my favorite place in the world." He loves rock, having performed (guitar, tenor saxophone, vocals) in various bands since 1995. His current band is the Babysitters, a rock-and-roll power trio that includes his wife on drums.
Hill lives in Denver, where he works at the University of Denver library. His second novel (in the works) involves a ranch, a snow storm, the American Basketball Association, and some prehistoric megafauna.
Oh, and he has no sense of smell. "I was born that way," he says. (Adapted from the publihser and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
In his promising debut, Hill wrings lightness from a hopeless situation. Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams returns to the eastern Colorado farmland of his childhood and discovers that his widower father’s senility has worsened.... So Shakes moves in to look after his ailing pa.... But bills mount and foreclosure looms, and Shakes’s high school buddies devise a plan: rob a bank.... Though Shakes’s psychic paralysis is palpable, it’s hard to understand...what stalled his life’s takeoff back in Denver [or]....why he refuses to look for at least one parachute during his father’s nosedive.
Publishers Weekly
Suddenly caretaker of his senile father and the family farm in eastern Colorado, to which he has just returned, Stacey "Shakespeare" Williams links up with some old high school buddies and hatches a plan to rob the victimizing local bank. Do they really mean to go through with it? Dark comedy with an in-the-news edge.
Library Journal
A fine first novel from a writer with a great sense of character.
Booklist
You can go home again, but Lord knows why you'd ever want to. Such is the lesson learned by rural drifter Stacey "Shakespeare" Williams in this agreeable, offbeat debut novel..... The only hole is that we learn almost nothing of Shakespeare's back story.... Shakespeare eventually decides that his best option is an unrealistic plan to rob the bank; whether he'll go through with it is a running question throughout the book. A story about a father and son who bond against the odds, with an ending as quirkily satisfying as the rest of the book
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1) Is East of Denver a comedy? Or are the "funny" parts so tinged with sadness that the book can only be considered tragic? For instance, is it okay to laugh when Emmett misstates an idiomatic expression? Or should we pity him? Further, does the book respect Emmett or is it so unsentimental in its portrayal that it he becomes a clown?
2) Why does the book, after two hundred pages of more or less realistic behavior, go completely nuts for the last few chapters? Why does the book end where it does, without a complete resolution? Do Shakes and Emmett land the plane? What happens to the people inside the bank? Ultimately, is it a happy ending or a sad ending?
3) What role does hopelessness play in East of Denver? It seems that most of the characters are motivated not by a promise of a better life, but out of a certain despair for the gradual worsening of their own. Clarissa McPhail's eating disorder, Vaughan Atkins’ reluctance to leave his basement, and Shakespeare's ultimate decision for the future of the farm all seem to be the acts of people who've given up hope. Does this make these characters hard to like? Only Emmett, with his lack of mooring in time, seems to be impervious to the misery that gradually descends throughout the novel.
4) Sense of place questions: The author has said that East of Denver represents the "unhomesteading of America," going so far as to claim that the book can be interpreted as a reverse of Hal Borland's growing-up-on-the-plains memoir, High Wide and Lonesome. Is there a greater geographical, political, environmental message within this concept of "unhomesteading?" And how is the barren, yet teeming-with-life, nature of the landscape reflected in the book's characters?
5) The plot of East of Denver is unconventional, almost meandering at times. Is this a weakness or is it a deliberate attempt to mimic the undirected nature of life overcome by dementia?
6) Why don't we ever find out what Shakes did for work in Denver? It seems like his job/friends/living conditions would be relevant to the story. But the book barely mentions his Denver life.
7) Are there any biblical allusions in the story? The bush with snake in it, the garden, the conclusive flight toward the heavens. . .are these deliberate biblical references with some sort of message? Or did the author put them in just to make people ask questions like this one?
(Questions kindly provided by the author...with a big assist from Nancy McWhorter, one of LitLovers' loyal readers!)