The Swan
Published by Indiana University Press
“Alternately funny, entertaining, and heartbreaking, The Swan is a fictional memoir about love, death and what a family can?and cannot?endure.” —Publishers Weekly
Indianapolis, 1957. Ten-year-old Aaron Cooper has witnessed the death of his younger sister, Pookie, and the trauma has left him unwilling to speak. Aaron copes with life’s challenges by disappearing into his own imagination, envisioning being captain of the Kon Tiki, driving his sled in the snowy Klondike, and tiger hunting in India. He is guarded by secret friends like deposed Hungarian Count Blurtz Shemshoian and Blurtz’s wonder dog, Nipper, who protect him from the Creature from the Black Lagoon—who hides in Aaron’s closet at night. The tales he constructs for himself, the real life stories he is witness to, and his mother’s desperate efforts to bring her son back from the brink, all come to a head at an emotional family dinner.
“Funny, poignant and as endearing as its central character, The Swan is a wholly original tribute to childhood resilience.” —San Jose Mercury News
“Had Kurt Vonnegut, William Saroyan, J. D. Salinger, Carlos Castaneda, Raymond Carver and James Thurber ever gathered at a writer’s workshop to co-author a short novel, the product might well have been The Swan.” —Terre Haute Tribune Star
“A surreal study of a grief observed indirectly, The Swan serves as a testament to the unbridled power of childhood vision, even and especially in the wake of tragedy.” —Bloom magazine
Indianapolis, 1957. Ten-year-old Aaron Cooper has witnessed the death of his younger sister, Pookie, and the trauma has left him unwilling to speak. Aaron copes with life’s challenges by disappearing into his own imagination, envisioning being captain of the Kon Tiki, driving his sled in the snowy Klondike, and tiger hunting in India. He is guarded by secret friends like deposed Hungarian Count Blurtz Shemshoian and Blurtz’s wonder dog, Nipper, who protect him from the Creature from the Black Lagoon—who hides in Aaron’s closet at night. The tales he constructs for himself, the real life stories he is witness to, and his mother’s desperate efforts to bring her son back from the brink, all come to a head at an emotional family dinner.
“Funny, poignant and as endearing as its central character, The Swan is a wholly original tribute to childhood resilience.” —San Jose Mercury News
“Had Kurt Vonnegut, William Saroyan, J. D. Salinger, Carlos Castaneda, Raymond Carver and James Thurber ever gathered at a writer’s workshop to co-author a short novel, the product might well have been The Swan.” —Terre Haute Tribune Star
“A surreal study of a grief observed indirectly, The Swan serves as a testament to the unbridled power of childhood vision, even and especially in the wake of tragedy.” —Bloom magazine
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