Mink River

Mink RiverLike Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio, " Brian Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people. In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost love affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and

Like Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio, " Brian Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people.

In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking. . .

It's the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and readers will close the book more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Oregon State University Press
Published: 10/01/2010
ISBN: 9780870715853
Pages: 319
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
Award: Oregon Book Awards - Finalist
Award: IndieFab awards - Winner

Review Citations: Library Journal 09/01/2010 pg. 98
Publishers Weekly 08/30/2010 pg. 28
Shelf Awareness 01/01/0001