Crooked River Burning

by Mark Winegardner

Book Overview

In 1948 Cleveland was America's sixth largest city; by 1969 it was the twelfth. For Easterners, Cleveland is where the Midwest begins; for Westerners, it is where the East begins. In the summer of 1948, fourteen-year-old David Zielinsky can look forward to a job at the docks. Anne O'Connor, at twelve, is the apple of her political boss father's eye. David and Anne will meet-and fall in love-four years later, and for the next twenty years this pair...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 015601422X
• ISBN13: 9780156014229
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

a masterpiece

I have a friend who used to run a big independent bookstore here who says this novel is the worst-promoted great novel he's ever seen. Word of mouth on this book was good (my bookseller friend says a lot of independent stores really loved it), and I guess in the end it did do fairly well. But his publisher seemed to think that no one outside of Cleveland would want to read this, which is really weird, espcially when you see how fellow rustbelt books THE CORRECTIONS and MIDDLESEX did. I like both those novels a lot, but CROOKED RIVER BURNING lacks the sophomoric lapses those books fall into from time to time and has a much bigger scope than either one. I think that the best American novels published in this century are those three, Michael Chabon's THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY and Jonathan Lethem's THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE. They're all great and they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. (They're all by writers who are about my age, too, for what that's worth.) Anyway, when Winegardner's sequel to THE GODFATHER comes out, he'll probably finally get his due Somewhere in the hereafter, I bet Mario Puzo is thrilled such a talent agreed to take on the "family" business!

Loved this book!

I have lived in Cleveland for 10 years, and I truly enjoyed this book. Mark managed to actually put me back in time in 1948 when Rock and Roll was just getting started in America. His description of the World Series game that the Indians won that year was exciting, and I don't even like baseball. I loved the love story in the book, and I loved the way it ended. This book is not just a book about Cleveland. It's a book about an era in American history. It's about life in the 50's; the birth of rock and roll; politics of the time; and love, not so different from what you and I experience today.About the river: It's hard to believe that the river was so polluted back then when it's so clean now -- hard to imagine. We really have come a long way. Cleveland rocks!!!I hope Mark's next novel will come out soon.Come and see us in Cleveland!

HUGELY AMBITIOUS & HUGELY TALENTED!

Here's that rare animal -- a hugely ambitious novel in which the ambitions of the author are hugely realized! Winegardner has got it down bigtime! His depiction of Cleveland (I speak as a long-alienated native) is as good as it gets and his blend of real people and fictional protagonists really works. He made me care deeply about his two leads characters, drew them so well I felt I knew them. I cannot fault his writing, his concept, his delivery in any way. I only wish this book were better packaged in terms of cover art, to attract the readers it so richly deserves. If you think Cleveland is a bore or a joke, when you finish CROOKED RIVER BURNING you'll find you have a new vision. Bravo for the author! My highest recommendation!

The great read for the season

Don't let the description of the basic plot of this novel make you think in any way that it is derivative or ho-hum...the basic "boy from the wrong side of town" plot. It may seem to start there, but it is so much more by even just the first 25 pages. This novel does what I look for in a book: tells a unique story, creating a time and place, with characters which live. To this extent The Albany Trilogy by Wm Kennedy comes closest to a reference on the literary map. The historical setting of the start of the second half of the 20th century, Cleveland (of all places, but it works!) gives a window to America, baseball, emerging women's and race issues, social classes, politics, life lived then in full color rather than black and white.The real and true strength of the book though is in the mastery of language, playful and otherwise, astonishing, the explicit presence and voice of an author that is not intrusive to the story, but woven into the telling. Just as Lethem and Auster have their own unique voices and styles, so too does Winegardner.There are other novel coming out right now. I personally am looking forward to new Delillo, and another from Norton titled Death of Vishnu, Peter Carey's newest. None of them can be stronger than this one though.

Winegardner/Crooked River Burning

A thoroughly enjoyable modern epic! Fast-paced and evocative narrative woven around two very likeable main characters. The text has a wonderfully theatrical quality to it as well.