The Old Man and the Sea

Name: The Old Man and the Sea
Rating: 4.052631578947368 (57 reviews)
Author: Philipp Meyer
ISBN: 9781471132766

by Philipp Meyer

4.1

(57 ratings)

689 pages2012ISBN 9781471132766

Adventure Fiction War Family Epic Literature Women History Comanche Indians

AdventurousEpic

About this book

Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries. Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli--against all odds--adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways, their language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the chief of the band, and fighting their wars against not only other Indians, but white men, too-complicating his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance, and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation, and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild. Deftly interweaving Eli’s story with those of his son, Peter, and his great-granddaughter, JA, The Son deftly explores the legacy of Eli’s ruthlessness, his drive to power, and his life-long status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon-an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.

Publication Details

Published: 2012
Pages: 689
ISBN: 9781471132766

About Philipp Meyer

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American writer and journalist. During his lifetime he wrote and had published seven novels; six collections of short stories; and two works of non-fiction. Since his death three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction autobiographical works have been published. Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingway was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he worked as a reporter but within months he left for the Italian front to be an ambulance driver in World War I. He was seriously injured and returned home within the year. He married his first wife Hadley Richardson in 1922 and moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent. During this time Hemingway met, and was influenced by, writers and artists of the 1920s expatriate community known as the "Lost Generation". In 1924 Hemingway wrote his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. In the late 1920s, Hemingway divorced Hadley, married his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, and moved to Key West, Florida. In 1937 Hemingway went to Spain as a war correspondent to cover the Spanish Civil War. After the war he divorced Pauline, married his third wife Martha Gellhorn, wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, and moved to Cuba. Hemingway covered World War II in Europe and he was present at Operation Overlord. Later he was in Paris during the liberation of Paris. After the war, he divorced again, married his fourth wife Mary Welsh Hemingway, and wrote Across the River and Into the Trees. Two years later, The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952. Nine years later, after moving from Cuba to Idaho, he committed suicide in the summer of 1961. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid 1920s and the mid 1950s, though a number of unfinished works were published posthumously. Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by economy and understatement, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-cent