Although Earl Thompson only published three novels while alive - A Garden of Sand, Tattoo, and Caldo Largo - and a fourth one (The Devil To Pay) posthumously, what novels they were! So bristling with rage and contemptuous of taboo are they that I hesitate to say how autobiographical in nature they are. I began A Garden of Sand at the behest of Mr. Christiansen*, and was at first enthralled by its sterling depiction of Depression-era Wichita; very quickly, though, I found myself drawn into the characters' inner lives in a way I hadn't been since I started reading Steinbeck.*One of the members of the brain trust here at the Pop Culture Institute.
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Love a place like Kansas and you can be content in a garden of raked sand
ReplyDelete"A Garden of Sand' is such a good book, I'm just trying to get the word out.
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