Refiner's Fire
by Mark Helprin
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An Israeli soldier ?s life flashes before his eyes in this epic tale: ?As if The Odyssey had been updated and rewritten by Dylan Thomas ? ( The Listener , UK). In 1947, Marshall Pearl is orphaned at birth aboard an immigrant ship off the coast of Palestine. Brought to America, he grows up a child of the Hudson Valley, determined to see the world in all its beauty and ferocity. His epic journey takes him from Jamaica to Harvard; from Great Plains slaughterhouses to the Mexican desert; show more and from the sea to the Alps. Marshall is eventually drawn to Israel to confront the circumstance of his birth in a crucible of war, magic, suffering, and grace. We first meet Marshall among the mortally wounded Israeli soldiers who are being transferred to Haifa during the Yom Kippur War. From there we follow Marshall ?along with his memories and dreams ?as he reconstructs his life, galvanizing strength through all that he has learned, suffered, and hoped. ?Superb...A first-rate odyssey, full of insight and humor and hard-earned truths ? ? San Francisco Chronicle show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I didn't like this so much. Still a wonderful writing style, but the story is a little raw. Something of a "man's book", I think.
Refiner's Fire: The Life and Adventures of Marshall Pearl, a Foundling
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Author Information
21+ Works 13,830 Members
Mark Helprin was born in Manhattan, New York on June 28, 1947. He received degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford, Princeton University, and Columbia University. He has served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air show more Force. He is the author of numerous novels including Refiner's Fire, A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, Freddy and Fredericka, and In Sunlight and In Shadow. Winter's Tale was adapted into a movie in 2014. His short story collection, Ellis Island and Other Stories, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1981. His other short story collections include A Dove of the East and Other Stories and The Pacific and Other Stories. He also writes children's books including Swan Lake, A City in Winter, and The Veil of Snows. He has received several awards including the National Jewish Book Award, the Prix de Rome, the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award in 2006, and the Salvatori Prize in the American Founding in 2010. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Refiner's Fire
- Original publication date
- 1978
- People/Characters
- Marshall Pearl
- Epigraph
- Damn your eyes, you ignorant beebuckle. This is no play upon the stage, a circlet, a doublet to unfold. And I have not written it. It is a Romance -- written by the ravishing pace of five thousand years. - Translated qu... (show all)ite freely from The Bee and the Thimble, by Lapin of Rotterdam
- First words
- It was one of those perfectly blue, wild days in Haifa when winds from Central Asia and the eastern deserts come roaring into the city like a flight of old propeller planes.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And from the east, the sun came up with all its white thunder to light another day.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 440
- Popularity
- 69,250
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.62)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 5
