"Gorgeous. Devastating. Lyrical. Addictive."
- Dianah H., Powell's Books Staff Pick (OR)
Cover Design: Nathan Shields
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*One of the Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2018, New York Magazine's Vulture
*A Summer Reading Pick, The Oregonian *A Willamette Week Pick of the Week *A Powell's Books Staff Pick (Oregon) * Best of the Northwest, PNBA Holiday Catalog 2019 * A Northshire Bookstore Staff Pick (New York) * A Front Porch Pick, The Quivering Pen * Included in the American Booksellers Association Indiebound White Box, August 2018 *A Goodreads Pick for the 2019 Tournament of Books "A tour de force. Exquisitely rendered." Justin Hocking author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld "A novel in conversation with Faulkner & Melville. Bold & ambitious." Peter Turchi author of A Muse & a Maze "Cunningham has once again raised the bar on the art of the novel. I walk away from a reading like this ruminating on the largeness of life & the lasting impact of the arts — the lasting influence that novelists can have on every one of us." Nancy Scheemaker Northshire Bookstore Staff Pick (NY) |
Benjamin Lorn, sensitive son of an embittered Civil War veteran, comes of age in the tiny Iowa town of Perpetua where, in a single summer, he mourns the recent loss of his mother, falls in love, and uncovers a shameful family secret that sends him fleeing west. Tormented with this new knowledge, Benjamin seeks transcendence through the telegraph wires that have enchanted him since boyhood. Meanwhile the weight of a dark duty grows more and more pressing.
Perpetua's Kin is M. Allen Cunningham's enthralling multi-generational mystery, reworking of Hamlet, and profoundly contemporary exploration of the American experience as one family embodies it. Spanning much of North America over more than a century, from the 1820s Midwest, through the American south of the Civil War, to the remote west of the 1880s, and finally to World War II San Francisco, Cunningham's novel is a powerful portrait of this nation's violent heritage, our vulnerability to the vastness of our own geography, our chronic restlessness and desire for regeneration through technology, and our inability to escape the history that forms us and, always, demands a reckoning.
Perpetua's Kin is M. Allen Cunningham's enthralling multi-generational mystery, reworking of Hamlet, and profoundly contemporary exploration of the American experience as one family embodies it. Spanning much of North America over more than a century, from the 1820s Midwest, through the American south of the Civil War, to the remote west of the 1880s, and finally to World War II San Francisco, Cunningham's novel is a powerful portrait of this nation's violent heritage, our vulnerability to the vastness of our own geography, our chronic restlessness and desire for regeneration through technology, and our inability to escape the history that forms us and, always, demands a reckoning.
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"A tightly kept secret beats in the bruised heart of Perpetua's Kin, which traces the Lorn family’s journey from 19th-century Germany to rural Iowa to a Civil War prison camp to World War II-era San Francisco. Over and over, the Lorns slip the surly bonds of family in a tale set against the backdrop of an American century. The Portland author’s writing is laconic yet lyrical, alternating easily between prose and poetry."-The Oregonian
"A sweeping tale of family, violence, history, and technological transcendence."-Willamette Week (Pick of the Week)
"An absolutely brilliant novel by one of the most gifted fiction writers working today. In this unforgettable twist on Hamlet set against the aftermath of the Civil War, Cunningham examines the wounds of a family & a country. He manages to make his story both sweeping and tender, gripping and unhurried. From the first haunting scene, I was anxious to know what family secrets Benjamin would find in his hidden packet of letters — and what new life might await him down the miles of his beloved telegraph lines. But I forced myself to slow down and read this when I had time to do it properly. I'm so glad I did, because this is a book to be savored. Perpetua's Kin is old-fashioned only in the flawlessness of its prose. I loved it."-Amy Mason Doan, author of The Summer List and Summer Hours (Goodreads review)
"Perpetua's Kin is not one story, but scraps of many: heartbreaking love affair, unsettling murder mystery, grisly war chronicle, missing person account, family narrative, and also a record of our human obsession with frontiers, both technological and continental. These are not new stories, of course. But Cunningham has re-appropriated them, pairing and re-pairing these various narratives of patriotism and love, shame and war...revealing how all these fragments contrast and work together to demand that we consider afresh a history we thought we already knew."-Virginia Bellis Brandabur, co-curator of Why There Are Words PDX
"A pleasure to read. A most American novel ... the story of secrets outliving those who perpetuated them ... with a narrative thread as strong and dependable as Morse's telegraph wire."-Clayton Pioneer
"Full of powerful scenes. Perpetua’s Kin demands to be absorbed, for the reader to take their time, and for every scene to be savored." -Heavy Feather Review
"Perpetua's Kin takes readers on a journey from the western theater of the Civil War to 1940s San Francisco as it traces the fortunes -- and misfortunes -- of the Lorn family. A classic multigenerational family saga. A beautiful love letter to the written word. A literary work that rightfully takes its time. A flowing tale that brings to light lesser-known aspects of generally well-known time periods. A treat for anyone who enjoys elegant writing."-Historical Novels Review
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"With Perpetua's Kin, M. Allen Cunningham once again demonstrates he is one of the bravest and most talented novelists writing today. His prose sings with a rare kind of poetry, even as the story sweeps you along with its dark mystery and heartbreaking tension. With each page
we gain the greatest gift of fiction: an insight into our own trembling humanity.” -Eowyn Ivey author of To the Bright Edge of the World and Pulitzer Prize Finalist “A novel in conversation with Faulkner and Melville and possibly even Robert Louis Stevenson. … A writer both original and well aware of the writers who have come before him. Cunningham’s writing, like the scope of his novel, is bold and ambitious.” -Peter Turchi author of A Muse and a Maze, and judge for the Oregon Literary Fellowship "Perpetua's Kin blew me away with its stark, astonishing music. I've never seen the raw devastations of war brought alive in language so uncannily beautiful, so powerfully strange. This is a flat-out brilliant book." -Leni Zumas author of Red Clocks, The Listeners, and Farewell Navigator "M. Allen Cunningham delivers a tour de force performance in Perpetua's Kin, a novel that materializes — almost as if by magic — as both a sprawling epic and a series of exquisitely wrought miniatures. Drawing on his impressive palette of literary craft and lyricism, Cunningham transports the reader across the continent, through multiple eras, and into the souls of his characters. Perpetua's Kin is an aching meditation on solitude and connection, and the vast American landscape that breeds both." -Justin Hocking author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld "With a vast scope and penetrating psychological depth, Perpetua’s Kin achieves what I want most from historical fiction, making the past not only vividly real but essential to our understanding of the complicated present. M. Allen Cunningham’s novel takes us on a journey into our messy and violent American legacy and offers us a pathway out, confronting brutal truths and embracing hard-won compassion." -Scott Nadelson author of The Fourth Corner of the World "In Perpetua’s Kin, Cunningham draws compelling characters whose lives are tangled knots and whose stories are intricately woven through time and place. From the first sentence to the last, the lyric majesty of Cunningham’s prose ushers us on a brilliant magic carpet ride steered by a master storyteller." -Gina Ochsner author of The Hidden Letters of Velta B. "Perpetua's Kin manages to echo a nation's secrets and recriminations within one family's relationships, slowly revealing facts and attempted forgiveness as it travels through time. Cunningham dexterously focuses on rich, specific moments between characters, allowing the mysteries of the past to gradually, inevitably surface. Like the invisible electricity of the telegraph, or a retrieved packet of hidden letters, this narrative's power is irresistible." -Peter Rock author of Spells and My Abandonment "Perpetua's Kin is beautiful, reminiscent of The Green Age of Asher Witherow in that it has the cadence I remember that takes the reader right in ... M. Allen Cunningham gives us a book to savor -- a fulfilling, substantial book, and a joy to read." - Janet Boreta founder of Orinda Books (CA) "Weaving several meaningful themes ... [Perpetua's Kin] is both questioning and underscoring a number of basic American assumptions. The first involves heroism and the Civil War ... the second considers the entrepreneur spirit of the American West ... finally, and most importantly, Cunningham is pondering notions of family inheritance and family angst. Why can’t we break free from parents and the past? What heavy burdens do we unknowingly carry? Cunningham’s style [is] verbal pointillism. Staccato daubs of sentences and paragraph, truncated letters and whispered conversations, unhappy mixtures and matches of past and present ... The style, in effect, resembles dits and dots of the telegraph system, interrupted sequences of electrical energy that somehow tell a tale..." -Ann Ronald, (for Bookin' with Sunny) author of Friendly Fallout 1953 and The New West of Edward Abbey and Foundation Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno Grant support provided by:
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"M. Allen Cunningham has once again raised the bar on the art of the novel. I enjoyed Perpetua's Kin as one would a rare smoky scotch — savoring the complexity. Perpetua's Kin may be a distinctly American portrait, but the overarching themes — war, love, wanderlust, suffering — are universal. I walk away from a reading like this ruminating on the largeness of life
and the lasting impact of the arts — the lasting influence that novelists can have on every one of us." - Nancy Scheemaker Northshire Bookstore Staff Pick (Saratoga Springs, NY) "A gorgeous story of a tangled family history that spans five generations...devastating... Cunningham is a remarkable writer: his prose is delicate, touching, and lyrical, and his precise wrangling of the English language shines throughout this book. Set partially during the Civil War, and against a backdrop of the new technology known as the telegram, and addressing themes of family, home, truth, war, and love, Perpetua's Kin is an addictive read with fully fleshed characters and a story that won't unclasp its grip on you." -Dianah H. Powell's Book Staff Pick (Portland, OR) "I very much hope [Perpetua's Kin] reaches as many readers' hands as possible...expansive in scope and ideas...precise and tight in language. For me, over the course of three days, it cut through the bells and whistles constantly demanding our attention and let me sink into its enchanting world." - Hans Weyandt Milkweed Books (MN) "Tolstoy posited that 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' By the same token, every family harbors its unique secrets. Immense anguish and resentment can ensue when those secrets are revealed (as they almost always are, wittingly or unwittingly), affecting multiple generations. The family so expertly imagined by M. Allen Cunningham in Perpetua's Kin has its share of such secrets and its share of commensurate pain as the truth wills out. From the battlefields of the Civil War to Ocean Beach in 1940s San Francisco, the characters in this family strive to understand each other's demons and motivations. Are we condemned to repeat the past? Or can we make peace with our legacy and move on with our lives? Much to contemplate in this thought-provoking novel." - Marion Abbott owner, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Berkeley, CA) "A poetic, kaleidoscopic look at inter-generational pain, love, longing, and restlessness, through the lenses of war and telegraphy." -Carolyn Kulog owner, Betty's Books (OR) UPCOMING
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An excerpt from Perpetua's Kin was published in Catamaran, Fall 2013. On the basis of his work in Perpetua’s Kin, M. Allen Cunningham received a 2018 Project Grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, an Oregon Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission, a Yaddo residency, and was awarded Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train Family Matters competition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. Allen Cunningham's debut novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow (Unbridled Books, 2004) was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association, was a Finalist for the Indie Next Book of the Year Award alongside works by Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, and Joyce Carol Oates, and was dubbed a "Regional Classic" by the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association and one of six "Best Books of the West" in the Salt Lake Tribune. Cunningham's Lost Son (Unbridled Books, 2007), an experimental biographical novel about the life and work of Rainer Maria Rilke, was named a Top Ten Book of the Northwest by The Oregonian and added to the official Rilke bibliography in Europe. His 2015 samizdat novel Partisans was a Finalist for the Flann O'Brien Award for Innovative Fiction and was praised by the late great Booker Prize winner John Berger, who said "It gave me energy...we join forces." Cunningham is also author of the illustrated, limited-edition short story collection Date of Disappearance and two volumes of nonfiction: The Honorable Obscurity Handbook and The Flickering Page: The Reading Experience in Digital Times. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Glimmer Train, Alaska Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, Catamaran, Poets & Writers, and many other outlets. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including an Oregon Literary Fellowship, a RACC grant, two fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, and residencies at Yaddo. Cunningham holds an MFA from Cedar Crest College's Pan-European Program in Creative Writing and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University. He started writing Perpetua's Kin in 2007.
ISBN: 978-0-9976523-7-6
336 pages / $17.00 list price
Publication Date: September 4, 2018
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group / Small Press United
(also available through Ingram and Baker & Taylor)
336 pages / $17.00 list price
Publication Date: September 4, 2018
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group / Small Press United
(also available through Ingram and Baker & Taylor)
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