The Bridge

The Bridge
Author(s): Doug Marlette

From Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Marlette comes the captivating story of Pick Cantrell, a successful newspaper cartoonist whose career has hit the skids. In the grip of a midlife meltdown, Pick returns with his wife and son to a small North Carolina town, where he confronts the ghosts of his past in the form of the family matriarch and his boyhood nemesis, Mama Lucy. What follows is an extraordinary story within a story, as Pick uncovers startling truths about himself and about the role his grandmother played in the tragic General Textile Strike Of 1934

A novel about family, love, and forgiveness, The Bridge explores how much we ever really know about others, and most important, about ourselves.

Review(s):
Marlette is one of the best new writers Ive read in a long time....[The Bridge] is absolutely compelling.
“Marlette masterfully evokes the fierce familial bonds that can either devastate or liberate the human spirit.”
“The fiction debut of a gifted and perceptive artist....Engaging.”
“Impressive...Engaging...[Marlette] is a talented novelist.”
“Marlette’s prose has a straightforward immediacy.”
“The Bridge [is] a well-written, engrossing tale....An impressive debut and powerful read.”
“..one of the best novels to come out of the South in recent years.”
The Bridge [is] a great story--exuberant, proud, myth-challenging. A hugely ambitious novel.
“[The Bridge]...contains just the right mix of humor and dignity. Recommended.”
“An exceptional first novel from a multi-talented author: gripping, exciting, moving, challenging, illuminating.”

Southeast Booksellers Assn. -- fiction

ISBN:  9780060505219