A01=Dennis Must
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Dennis Must
automatic-update
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FBA
COP=United States
Dante
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
doppelganger
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
familial longing
father-son
Hawthorne
identity
Inferno
irrealism
Language_English
Literary Fiction
Melville
Moby-Dick
mythical past
New England
PA=Available
Pirandellian
Poe
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
Psychology
recluse
Salem Witch Trials
softlaunch
The Scarlet Letter
Product details
- ISBN 9781636280592
- Dimensions: 127 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 29 Dec 2022
- Publisher: Red Hen Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
John Proctor, about to turn seventy, spies a disconsolate young man eyeing him from outside his remote studio window. Invited inside from the bitter cold and fed dinner, the visitor, who calls himself Eli, implies that he is no stranger to the man, having been told by his grandmother that “you might take me in.” Astonished to learn that the woman was his wife who decades earlier had aborted their marriage, which lasted “but the length of a wedding candle,” the narrator ruefully explains he has since relished living alone by making no lasting connections to anybody or anything. Whereupon Eli confides, “She also said you had profaned my mother,” the daughter John Proctor never knew he had. Thus commences MacLeish Sq., a tale of awakened remorse and familial longing recounted by an aging recluse when his life is abruptly upturned by the young visitor—captive to a mythical past of his own creation—who intimates that he and the narrator are unlikely strangers. Their unresolved relationship ultimately challenges the reader to question if he and his coincidental guest are one and the same . . . that Eli may be who the narrator has carefully hidden from himself throughout his adult life.
Dennis Must is the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press 2018), Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press 2014), and The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press 2014); as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company 2000 and Red Hen Press 2019). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain; in addition, a was a finalist in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Banjo Grease, the 2016 International Book Awards for Going Dark, and the 2014 USA Best Book Award in Literary Fiction for The World’s Smallest Bible. A member of the Authors Guild, his plays have been produced off-off-Broadway. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.
