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“[A] vigorous saga . . . One is reminded of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or Robertson Davies’ Deptford.” —New York Times Book Review
Ernest Hebert returns to Darby for a new novel in his “splendidly imagined cycle” (New York Times Book Review).
Ernest Hebert’s series of novels set in Darby, New Hampshire, has been hailed by the Boston Globe as “one of the most interesting accomplishments of contemporary American fiction . . . [a series] into which the texture of class is as skillfully woven as it is in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.” After almost fifteen years, Hebert has returned to this rich literary landscape for a new novel of the changing economic and social character of New England.
Hebert’s previous Darby novel, Live Free or Die, recounted the ill-fated love between Freddie Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, child of Upper Darby gentility. At its conclusion, Lilith died giving birth to their son. As Spoonwood opens, Freddie, consumed by grief and anger and struggling with alcoholism, is not prepared to be a father to Birch. But as both his family and Lilith’s begin to maneuver for custody of the child, Freddie embarks on a course of action that satisfies none of them.
Once again, Hebert masterfully conveys the natural and social landscape of contemporary rural New England. Grounded in complex, fully realized characters, Spoonwood offers Hebert’s most optimistic vision yet of acceptance and accommodation across class lines.
"Pair the Darby novels with the New England fiction of Richard Russo; both authors bring the same warmth and wry humor to their stories."
—Booklist
“Like William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County and Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Darby is not just a setting but an embodiment of the universal ways family and land tie the fates of individuals together. And like his literary predecessors, Hebert—a professor of English at Dartmouth—exhibits a fine-tuned awareness of his region and its people. In Spoonwood, Hebert shapes the New Hampshire woods into creatures and trees with histories of their own that intersect importantly with his human characters' lives. He also makes Darby's social and economic class conflicts exemplary, if perhaps somewhat exaggerated, of many contemporary New England communities.”—Valley News
“A meaningful book… I couldn't put the book down… 'Spoonwood' is an intimate story of both the kind of life we dream of and the kind of life we are happy to have been able to avoid. This is the reason, perhaps, why I read the book with such fascination.”—The Cabinet
“Ernie Hebert's novels don't just capture New England; they've become a part of it...and his latest is a spectacular addition to an already impressive canon. With surprising narrators and a fond nod to the power of a good story, Spoonwood chronicles how the birth of a son can lead to the rebirth of a father; and how the raw material of an ordinary man might be carved down, over
time, to reveal an extraordinary heart. Don't miss this one."—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and Vanishing Acts
“Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Ernest Hebert is still right at home in Darby, and Spoonwood will take you in if you go there.”—Tom Bodett
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
Independent Publisher Book Awards, Best Regional Fiction, U.S. Northeast Category 2006
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ERNEST HEBERT’s most recent novel was the critically acclaimed The Old American, hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “a brilliant work” and by Alan Cheuse on NPR as a “deeply appealing novel.” His earlier Darby novels The Dogs of March, Live Free or Die, and The Kinship (a one-volume edition of A Little More Than Kin and The Passion of Estelle Jordan) are available in paperback from Hardscrabble Books. He is Professor of English at Dartmouth College.
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To learn more about Ernest Hebert and his writing visit his website here.
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