| The Shadow Catcher Contributor(s): Wiggins, Marianne (Author) |
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ISBN: 0743265211 ISBN-13: 9780743265218 Publisher: Simon & Schuster OUR PRICE: $18.89 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2008 Annotation: Following her National Book Award finalist "Evidence of Things Unseen," Wiggins turns her literary imagination to the American West, where the life of legendary photographer Edward S. Curtis is the basis for a resonant exploration of history and family, landscape and legacy. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Biographical - Fiction | Historical - General - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.83" H x 5.61" W x 8.33" (0.68 lbs) 336 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Following her National Book Award finalist, Evidence of Things Unseen, Marianne Wiggins turns her extraordinary literary imagination to the American West, where the life of legendary photographer Edward S. Curtis is the basis for a resonant exploration of history and family, landscape and legacy. The Shadow Catcher dramatically inhabits the space where past and present intersect, seamlessly interweaving narratives from two different eras: the first fraught passion between turn-of-the-twentieth-century icon Edward Curtis (1868-1952) and his muse-wife, Clara; and a twenty-first-century journey of redemption. Narrated in the first person by a reimagined writer named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Hollywood, where top producers are eager to sentimentalize the complicated life of Edward Curtis as a sunny biopic: It's got the outdoors. It's got adventure. It's got the do-good element. Yet, contrary to Curtis's esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. Jump to the next generation, when Marianne's own father, John Wiggins (1920-1970), would live and die in equal thrall to the impulse of wanderlust. Were the two men running from or running to? Dodging the false beacons of memory and legend, Marianne amasses disparate clues -- photographs and hospital records, newspaper clippings and a rare white turquoise bracelet -- to recover those moments that went unrecorded, to hear the words only the silent ones can speak. The Shadow Catcher, fueled by the great American passions for love and land and family, chases the silhouettes of our collective history into the bright light of the present. |
Contributor Bio(s): Wiggins, Marianne: - Marianne Wiggins is the author of seven books of fiction including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen. She has won an NEA grant, the Whiting Writers' Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and she was a National Book Award finalist in fiction for Evidence of Things Unseen. |