Overview

ON AN ISLAND IN ALASKA, A COLLISION OF INNOCENCE, ABSURDITY, AND WILD GRACE A deeply funny, fiercely tender novel about a teenage boy at an Alaskan island camp for juvenile delinquents and the 'terrorists' who come to invade it. ""Outrageously comic and tenderly moving"" Library Journal ""Literally outlandish...inspired tragicomedy"" The New Yorker In Bad Guys, the highly acclaimed author of Island Sojourn and Beyond the Mountain gives us, for the first time, a novel in the comic mode - a tale at once farcical in its invention, lyrical in its vision of the northern wilderness, and fiercely touching in its advocacy of the human spirit. Played out against the backdrop of the Gulf of Alaska, ""where rocks are really rocks,"" this is a novel full of ""bad guys"" the inhabitants - and the strange invaders - of Chenega, an island work camp for juvenile delinquents. Among them are the fifteen-year-old half-Aleut camper Harry, polished into a piercing purity of heart by the longtime need to keep his dangerously unbalanced brother from killing; and the intruders: Spike, a graduate of Chenega, educated into muddled vengefulness by prison after prison; his childlike companion, Wesley, a drifter who is guided in his travels by the World Spirit; and Wesley's driven, anorexic daughter Amolia. As, with wild ineptitude, the three ""terrorists"" make their way toward Chenega to lay siege to the camp; as Harry scours the dictionary for language (""you noxious miasma, you pusillanimous pismire"") that will permit self-expression in the face of the No Swearing rule; and as the on-island director's wistful game plan of teaching the campers Trust metamorphoses into a mass breakout, Bad Guys careens through an absurd and heart-stopping moment of violence to a climax that is a celebration of innocence and courage. Readers of Island Sojourn and Beyond the Mountain will find the same pleasures here: textured and cadenced prose, resonant imagery, sharply yet lovingly drawn characters, a powerful evocation of the sometimes terrible beauty of the natural world. But in Bad Guys, as never before in her work, Elizabeth Arthur depicts the intricate interweaving of comedy with tragedy that is the core of life. This is a deeply moving and wonderfully funny book With a Foreword by Elizabeth Arthur's husband, Steven Bauer.

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9781969498237

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Reviews

""It's hard to know which part of this inventive novel to like the most: its characters - the drifters, juvenile delinquents, and generally bewildered outsiders who inhabit its Alaskan setting - or the wilderness itself, the setting these people live in, which seems, in a way, to live in them."" Publisher's Weekly, Sept. 5, 1986 ""Literally outlandish. . . inspired tragicomedy."" The New Yorker ""When the two swift and steady narratives in this heartfelt novel of the Pacific Northwest come together, all hell breaks loose. The tragi- comical result manages to separate the good guys from the bad, and to instill a well-earned and welcome moral - that cooperation and kindness matter more than mere survival."" Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1986 ""One might accurately call Arthur a 'landscape novelist', akin to a landscape painter, for in all her novels she expertly yet sensitively charts the rugged terrain her characters inhabit as well as the more fragile contours of their souls... [Bad Guys] surrealistically depicts both physical and psychological survival in a world whose absurdity rings uncomfortably true. A tour de force."" Booklist, Sept. 1986 ""Arthur's characters are very good indeed. . . This is an oddly funny book and one that is warmly sympathetic."" Susan Dooley, The Washington Post, Sept. 30, 1986 ""In Bad Guys Arthur maintains the sharp eye for description and ability to write lyrical, cadenced prose amply exhibited in her earlier books. Moments of natural observation can be startling and beautiful. Bad Guys is a serious novel that attempts to examine troubling issues."" Ilene Raymond, The Philadelphia Inquirer ""An oddly lilting tale about redemption and hope. . . Arthur writes with a simple, straightforward clarity, her prose lean and lyrical."" Vivienne Heines, Houston Chronicle, Sept. 25, 1986 ` ""An intriguing new novel . . . the whole book generates a wonderful feeling of satisfaction. Bad Guys will leave you with a smile on your face."" Barbara Paul, Pittsburgh Press, Sept. 1986 ""Both outrageously comic and tenderly moving. . . the book moves to a tense and satisfying climax."" Albert E. Wilhelm, Library Journal, October 1986

Author Information

Elizabeth Arthur is the author of five literary novels (Beyond the Mountain, Bad Guys, Binding Spell, Antarctic Navigation, and Bring Deeps) and two memoirs (Island Sojourn and Looking for the Klondike Stone.) Her books have been published by Harper and Row, Doubleday, Knopf, and Bloomsbury U.K. She has received fellowships and grants from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Vermont Council on the Arts, the Ossabaw Island Project, and the Indiana Arts Commission. She twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and was the first novelist ever given an Antarctic Artists and Writers Operational Support Grant from the National Science Foundation. Her novel Antarctic Navigation was chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book. She is the co-author, with her husband Steven Bauer, of the 26 mystery/adventure novels in the New Three Investigators series (2025-2027.) Steven Bauer is the author of three books for young people, the young adult fantasy Satyrday, the middle grade novel A Cat of a Different Color, and The Strange and Wonderful Tale of Robert McDoodle, a picture book in verse. Bauer's writing has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He has also been given grants and awards from Prairie Schooner, the Ossabaw Island Project, the Massachusetts Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission. He is the co-author, with his wife Elizabeth Arthur, of the 26 mystery/adventure novels in the New Three Investigators series (2025-2027.)

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