Bruce Murkoff

This impressive debut was one of my favorite novels of 2004. Murkoff combines wonderfully cadenced, vivid descriptions of the depression era West (think rangy expansive prose in the tradition of Steinbeck and Doig) with strongly-stamped characters who gradually emerge from the landscape into compelling life. The lives of three individuals flow towards each other — Filius Poe, a strong silent master builder whose life has crashed about his ears (Gregory Peck?); Lena McCardell, a woman who has taken her son and fed Oklamhoma and a traveling salesman who turned out to have another wife and family elsewhere on his circuit; and Lew Beck, a tough little runt who has been twisted by a succession of bullies into a ferocious homicide. These three types eventually converge and roil together at the construction of the great Boulder (aka Hoover) dam. Murkoff starts things off in a leisurely way, carrying you along on his assured, ambling prose suffused with sights and sounds and smells that are a strong as memory itself (there’s a busride that had me gasping for fresh air), and gradually builds things to the inevitable crescendo.… (more)

This impressive debut was one of my favorite novels of 2004. Murkoff combines wonderfully cadenced, vivid descriptions of the depression era West (think rangy expansive prose in the tradition of Steinbeck and Doig) with strongly-stamped characters who gradually emerge from the landscape into compelling life. The lives of three individuals flow towards each other — Filius Poe, a strong silent master builder whose life has crashed about his ears (Gregory Peck?); Lena McCardell, a woman who has taken her son and fed Oklamhoma and a traveling salesman who turned out to have another wife and family elsewhere on his circuit; and Lew Beck, a tough little runt who has been twisted by a succession of bullies into a ferocious homicide. These three types eventually converge and roil together at the construction of the great Boulder (aka Hoover) dam. Murkoff starts things off in a leisurely way, carrying you along on his assured, ambling prose suffused with sights and sounds and smells that are a strong as memory itself (there’s a busride that had me gasping for fresh air), and gradually builds things to the inevitable crescendo.… (more)