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Searching... Amity Public Library | FIC GLOSS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
In a new novel from the best-selling author of The Hearts of Horses and The Jump-Off Creek , a young ranch hand escapes a family tragedy and travels to Hollywood to become a stunt rider. In 1938, nineteen-year-old ranch hand Bud Frazer sets out for Hollywood. His little sister has been gone a couple of years now, his parents are finding ranch work and comfort for their loss where they can, but for Bud, Echol Creek, where he grew up and first learned to ride, is a place he can no longer call home. So he sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies -- and rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth.
On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer. Lily Shaw is bold and outspoken, confident in ways out of proportion with her small frame and bookish looks. But the two strike up an unlikely kinship that will carry them through their tumultuous days in Hollywood -- and, as it happens, for the rest of their lives.
Acutely observed, Falling from Horses charts what was to be a glittering year in the movie business through the wide eyes and lofty dreams of two people trying to make their mark on the world, or at least make their way in it. Molly Gloss weaves a remarkable tale of humans and horses, hope and heartbreak, narrated by one of the most winning narrators ever to walk off the page.
Author Notes
Molly Gloss was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches writing and literature of the American West at Portland State University and lives in Portland, Oregon.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
Gloss (The Hearts of Horses, 2007, etc.) presents moviemaking as anything but glamorous in this fictional memoir by an aging artist recalling his year as a movie extra/stuntman in 1938 Hollywood. In a matter-of-fact, laconic, utterly authentic-sounding voice, narrator Bud Frazer describes the year he tried breaking into movies, as well as his childhood on a hardscrabble Oregon ranch and, to a lesser extent, the years after he left Hollywood to become an artist. Part of Bud's charm is his own distrust of his memories, so readers forgive the old man (and by extension Gloss) for Bud's tendency to ramble and repeat himself. Four years after his undemonstrative but loving family was rocked by his younger sister's accidental death, barely 19-year-old Bud was working as an itinerant ranch hand in Oregon when he decided to head to Hollywood and become a movie cowboy. On the long bus ride south, he sat beside Lily Shaw, whose ambition was to write screenplays. Almost from the start, Bud makes it clear that while he and Lily would never be more than friends, their friendship was crucial to him while they were in Hollywood and has remained important long since their paths diverged. Lily began a slow rise from secretary to reader to writer while Bud's first job at a barn supplying horses for low-budget films segued into work as a cowboy stuntman. The elder Bud looks back and second-guesses choices he made as a kid. But even as he drank and partied with a fast crowd, he continued attending movies with Lily once a week. While Lily persevered past her disillusionment to become a successful writer, Bud's experiences on movie setsthe novel is brimming with instances of brutality to horses and their ridersmade him realize Hollywood was not for him, and he moved on. Don't expect a neatly structured plot, but the acute sense of time and place, coupled with a cast of characters drawn with unsentimental but abiding affection, makes for a hypnotic read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Hollywood glamour has no place in the rough-and-tumble cowboy movies being churned out by studios in the late 1930s. That's discovered by Bud Frazer, a young man from a ranching family looking to make his way as a stunt rider and, in the process, distance himself from personal tragedy. On the bus ride there, he strikes up what would become a lifelong friendship with an aspiring screenwriter. What follows are challenges for both Bud and his new friend Lily as they try to make their dreams reality. Gloss strips away any romantic notions of ranching life or moviemaking with detailed descriptions of long days of work and the tricks used on horses in the cowboy flicks. Bud is a marvelous narrator direct, self-effacing, and descriptive, looking back with some bemusement at the brashness of his 19-year-old self. The emotions stirred by his tale are as honest as a hard day's work during a roundup. The novel is sturdy in its simplicity, a send-up of the cowboy myth that replaces it with something more valuable a cowboy with heart.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2014 Booklist
Library Journal Review
To distract himself from a family tragedy, 19-year-old Bud works through his heartache by leaving Oregon to fulfill his Hollywood aspirations. Gloss fans might recognize his parents, Martha Lessen and Henry Frazer, from The Hearts of Horses (2007). In September 1938 Bud meets Lily Shaw on a bus to Tinseltown; she also has a dream: to become a movie scriptwriter. As Bud unfolds his tale about his lumps and bumps as a movie stuntman, he also offers glimpses of his 30-year friendship with Lily and his years growing up in Oregon. Evidence of the author's research about silver screen cowboys and the working environment for both stunt riders and their mounts makes Bud a reliable narrator. VERDICT Not to be missed by fans of this writer and others who love Western-based historical fiction, Gloss's fourth novel will also draw horse lovers although they might be repelled by the revelations about the brutal conditions of early movie making. A fourth-generation Oregonian, the author has accumulated a number of literary awards, including the Oregon Book Award and the PEN Center West Fiction Prize; "If All Seattle Read the Same Book" used Wild Life (2000) for its 2002 campaign. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/14.] Wendy W. Paige, Shelby Cty. P.L., Morristown, IN (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.