River of Heaven, Lee Martin
River of Heaven, Lee Martin
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
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River of Heaven

Author: Lee Martin

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Unabridged: 8 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/15/2008


Synopsis

“You have to know the rest of my story, the
part I can’t yet bring myself to say. A story
of a boy I knew a long time ago and a
brother I loved and then lost.”

Past and present collide in Lee Martin’s highly anticipated novel of a man, his brother, and the dark secret that both connects and divides them. Haunting and beautifully wrought, River of Heaven weaves a story of love and loss, confession and redemption, and the mystery buried with a boy named Dewey Finn.

On an April evening in 1955, Dewey died on the railroad tracks outside Mt. Gilead, Illinois, and the mystery of his death still confounds the people of this small town.

River of Heaven begins some fifty years later and centers on the story of Dewey’s boyhood friend Sam Brady, whose solitary adult life is much formed by what really went on in the days leading up to that evening at the tracks. It’s a story he’d do anything to keep from telling, but when his brother, Cal, returns to Mt. Gilead after decades of self-exile, it threatens to come to the surface.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Bright Forever, Lee Martin masterfully conveys, with a voice that is at once distinct and lyrical, one man’s struggle to come to terms with the outcome of his life. Powerful and captivating, River of Heaven is about the high cost of living a lie, the chains that bind us to our past, and the obligations we have to those we love.

About The Author

Lee Martin is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Bright Forever; a novel, Quakertown; a story collection, The Least You Need to Know; and two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones. He has won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, a Lawrence Foundation Award, and the Glenna Luschei Prize. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he directs the creative writing program at The Ohio State University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on May 03, 2017

What can I tell her about mistakes, about the things we shouldn’t have done? They’re ours forever. We carry them just under our skin, the scars of our living.Ripped from the headlines. Lee Martin came across an article in his wife's hometown newspaper about a man who had made his pooch a doghouse th......more

Goodreads review by Vonia on October 04, 2021

Lee Martin is quite talented at creating an ambiance. Yes, there is no better word for it. His books create an ambiance that pulls the reader in; but unlike other authors who do the same thing, Martin's words evoke strong emotion. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, since his books seem to lean......more

Goodreads review by Hatice on June 20, 2024

Bir ergen olan Sammy'nin cinsel kimliğini keşfettiği sırada yaşadığı bir facia onun bundan sonraki yaşamını ve tercihlerini değiştirir, gönüllü olarak yalnızlığı seçer...ta ki, geçmişin sırlarını ortaya çıkarmaya çalışan bir torun, geri dönen bir ağabey ve çevresinde hala dostluk elini uzatan birkaç......more

Goodreads review by Jackie on May 12, 2008

I had not read anything by Lee Martin, Pulitzer Prize Finalist for the book The Bright Forever, until this book and now I know what an amazing talent I've been missing. River of Heaven is a bittersweet, moving novel about loneliness, forgiveness and how we touch each others lives without even knowing......more

Goodreads review by L on February 27, 2009

I suppose that if I couldn't put down the book, it has to have 4 stars, at least, no? And this is one I couldn't stop reading, once I'd started. It's got engaging, sympathetic characters. Now, some of these characters could easily slide into stereotypes (the young teenage girl, essentially abandonde......more


Quotes

“If you don’t know Lee Martin, you should….[River of Heaven] is a page-turner, both tender and tough, with real insight into how people live and breathe and love and worry.”
Lincoln Journal Star

“Few writers could unfold Sam’s history with the grace and compassion of Lee Martin. River of Heaven is a wise and humane novel, a story of cowardice and courage and the torturous path between them.”
—Kathryn Harrison

“In River of Heaven, Lee Martin has created that rare thing: a literary page-turner. This is a story about the corrosive power of a childhood secret, and the way our lives are shaped as much by what we withold as what we reveal. An elegantly structured, powerful and original novel, full of heart.”
—Dani Shapiro

“Lee Martin’s portrait of Sam Brady, a man in fear of his life and crippled by it, lingers painfully and persuasively.”
—Amy Bloom, author of Away