Postcards - by Annie Proulx (Paperback)

About the Book

Loyal Blood is forced to abandon his Vermont farm when he commits the most terrible of crimes. Thus begins an odyssey that stretches from New England to the coast of California. Blood mines gold, prospects for uranium, grows beans, ranches, traps, and hunts for fossils. Teeming with historical detail and powerful portraits, Proulx's mesmerizing first novel is a new American classic.

Book Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx's first novel, Postcards, tells the mesmerizing tale of Loyal Blood, who misspends a lifetime running from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman.

From the bestselling author of Brokeback Mountain comes Postcards, the tale of the Blood family, New England farmers who must confront the twentieth century--and their own extinction. As the family slowly disintegrates, its members struggle valiantly against the powerful forces of loneliness and necessity, seeking a sense of home and place forever lost.

Loyal Blood, eldest son, is forced to abandon the farm when he takes his lover's life, thus beginning a quintessentially American odyssey of solitude and adventure. Yearning for love, yet forced by circumstance to be always alone, Loyal comes to symbolize the alienation and frustration behind the American dream.

Review Quotes

David Bradley The New York Times Book Review Story makes this novel compelling; technique makes it beautiful.

Frederick Busch Chicago Tribune A novel that feels like a fifth or sixth, not a first. This richly talented writer announces with Postcards that we had better, from now on, be listening for her voice...astonishingly accomplished.

Frederick Busch Chicago Tribune A rich, dark and brilliant feast of a book.

Geoffrey Stokes The Boston Sunday Globe E. Annie Proulx's Postcards triumphantly delivers.

Michael Upchurch San Francisco Chronicle Superb....Postcards makes Proulx as a gifted prose stylist who renders her characters on the page to mesmerizing effect.

About the Author

Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novels The Shipping News and Barkskins, and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story "Brokeback Mountain," which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Fen, Bog, and Swamp is her second work of nonfiction. She lives in New Hampshire.