Freebird, Jon Raymond
Freebird, Jon Raymond
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Freebird

Author: Jon Raymond

Narrator: Stephen R. Thorne

Unabridged: 10 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/10/2017


Synopsis

The Singers, an all-American family in the California style, are about to lose everything. Anne is a bureaucrat in the Los Angeles Office of Sustainability whose ideals are compromised by a proposal from a venture capitalist seeking to privatize the city's wastewater. Her brother, Ben, a former Navy SEAL, returns from Afghanistan disillusioned and struggling with PTSD, and starts down a path toward a radical act of violence. And Anne's teenage son, Aaron, can't decide if he should go to college or pitch it all and hit the road. They all live inside the long shadow of the Singer patriarch Grandpa Sam, whose untold experience of the Holocaust shapes his family’s moral character to the core.

Jon Raymond, screenwriter of the acclaimed films Meek's Cutoff and Night Moves, combines these narrative threads into a hard-driving story of one family's moral crisis. In Freebird, Raymond delivers a brilliant, searching novel about death and politics in America today, revealing how the fates of our families are irrevocably tied to the currents of history.

About Jon Raymond

Jon Raymond is the author of the novels The Half-Life, Rain Dragon, and Freebird, and the story collection Livability, winner of the Oregon Book Award. He has collaborated on six films with the director Kelly Reichardt, including Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves, First Cow, and the forthcoming Showing Up, numerous of which have been based on his fiction. He also received an Emmy Award nomination for his screenwriting on the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet. He was the editor of Plazm Magazine, associate and contributing editor at Tin House magazine, and a member of the Board of Directors at Literary Arts. His writing has appeared in Zoetrope, Playboy, Tin House, The Village Voice, Artforum, Bookforum, and other places. He lives in Portland, Oregon.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on February 06, 2017

This was pretty decent, but I felt a disconnect between the characters and some of the things they did. Also kind of felt that the ending was just decided upon rather than happened. Still, it was enjoyable.......more

Goodreads review by Peebee on January 26, 2018

As I was reading this book, I found myself thinking about how many stars I would give it, and it kept changing the longer I read. Early on, I had the book at three stars: it was painfully slow in the beginning, and I'm not a fan of so much description of the surroundings, even when well written (as......more

Goodreads review by Sean on December 31, 2023

2.5/5.0 I finally got around to the last of my unread giveaway books, and it was... fine, I guess. A dysfunctional family with their own branching narratives with their own messages. Even the people with the most noble of intentions can be tempted by charismatic salesmen and the promise of life-changi......more

Goodreads review by Gregory on February 06, 2024

A fan of Jon Raymond’s film work with Kelly Reichardt, this is my first of his novels. I chose this book for its brisk pacing, a decision rewarded by every scene. Yet at the same time I was able to appreciate an abundance of literary craftsmanship down to the sentence. I struggle with the star ratin......more

Goodreads review by Tom on August 14, 2017

Might help if I knew the music being referred to.......more