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A luminous portrait of a ten-year-old boy growing up in the Depression-era town of Aliceville, North Carolina
Selected by Granta as one of America's best young writers and featured in The New Yorker's best young fiction issue, Tony Earley now gives us a luminous portrait of a ten-year-old boy growing up in the Depression-era town of Aliceville, North Carolina:
"As the sun began to set, Jim and the uncles watched the last yellow light of the day slide up the mountain toward the bald, dragging evening behind it. When the light went out of their faces, they turned and watched it retreat up the peak, where at the summit a single tree flared defiantly before going dark. A chilly breeze whipped from nowhere across the bald and flapped the legs of Jim's overalls. He turned with the uncles for a last look at the view before heading down the mountain. All but the brightest greens had drained out of the world, leaving in their stead an array of somber blues. A low fog had begun to seep out between the trees along Painter Creek. Jim jumped down from the rock and looked again toward home."
At once delightful and wise, Jim the Boy brilliantly captures the pleasures and fears of youth at a time when America itself was young and struggling to come into its own.
Jim the Boy will appeal to the readers who loved classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, Ellen Foster, and A Member of the Wedding.
Alice McDermott, author of Charming Billy
Jim the Boy is a delight. A sweet, graceful novel that charms the reader with marvelous language, honest emotion, and authentic characters who are no less human, no less complex, for being sincere and straightforward, and good. As his short stories have already shown, Tony Earley is a wonderful writer. Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal
With the calm, measured quiet of a writer who knows absolutely what he is about, Tony Earley renders luminous one boy, one family, one very small town--and, by delicate implication, the wide world just beyond that charmed circle. Jill McCorkle, author of Carolina Moon
Jim the Boy, Tony Earley's wonderful novel, shines with all we've come to expect from his fine stories graceful prose, gentle wit, compassionate spirit. This novel beautifully captures those moments in childhood that will shape and forever call back to Jim the man. I don't know when I've met such an endearing cast of characters. May they live a long, long life.
If you liked Jim The Boy, try these:
by Eleanor Henderson
Published 2018
From New York Times bestselling author Eleanor Henderson, an audacious American epic set in rural Georgia during the years of the Depression and Prohibition.
by Clare Vanderpool
Published 2011
Powerful in its simplicity and rich in historical detail, Clare Vanderpool's debut is a gripping story of loss and redemption.
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