Overview

Publishers Weekly “Book of the Year” Firecracker Award Finalist “Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse's prophecy for life on earth at the end.” —NPR “Like all Mr. Lock’s books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.” —Wall Street Journal In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny, Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln’s funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days. By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America’s fabulous and murderous history. Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. His recent works of fiction include the short story collection Love Among the Particles, a Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year, and three books in The American Novels series: The Boy in His Winter, a re-envisioning of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; American Meteor, an homage to Walt Whitman and William Henry Jackson named a Firecracker Award finalist and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year; and The Port-Wine Stain, a gothic psychological thriller featuring Edgar Allan Poe. Lock lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.

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9781934137949

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Reviews

Advance Praise for American Meteor [American Meteor] feels like a campfire story, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right. --Publishers Weekly ( Pick of the Week starred review) Praise for Norman Lock [Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights. --NPR One of the most interesting writers out there. --Reader's Digest One of our country's unsung treasures. --Green Mountains Review Our finest modern fabulist. --Bookslut A master storyteller. --Largehearted Boy [A] contemporary master of the form [and] virtuosic fabulist. --Flavorwire A master of the unusual. -- Slice magazine Lock's work mines the stuff of dreams. --Rumpus One could spend forever worming through [Lock's] magicked words, their worlds. --Believer No other writer in recent memory, lives up to [Whitman's] declaration that behind every book there is a hand reaching out to us, a hand to be held onto, a hand that has the power to touch us, to make us feel. --Detroit Metro Times Lock is a rapturous storyteller, and his tales are never less than engrossing. --Kenyon Review Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth. --Shelf Awareness Lock plays profound tricks, with language--his is crystalline and underline-worthy. --Publishers Weekly Lock's stories stir time as though it were a soup ... beyond the entertainment lie 21st-century conundrums: What really exists? Are we each, ultimately, alone and lonely? Where is technology taking humankind? --Kirkus Reviews Lock's writing is beautiful, with clean, clear, perfect sentences ... seducing the reader with language and narrative into a fully realized alternative world. --Shelf Awareness for Readers I can't think of another author who takes such evident, vocal delight in bending the laws of physics and geography (to say nothing of his flouting of various narratological and fictional norms). You can feel the joy leaping off the page. --Full Stop [Lock] is not engaged in neither homage or pastiche but in an intense dialogue with a number of past writers about the process of writing, and the nature of fiction itself ... taking a trope that seems familiar to readers of the weird but analysing it in the fiercest detail. --Weird Fiction [Lock's] window onto fiction [is] a welcome one: at once referential and playful, occupying a similar post-Borges space to the short stories of Stephen Millhauser and Neil Gaiman. --Vol. 1 Brooklyn All hail Lock, whose narrative soul sings fairy tales, whose language is glass. --KATE BERNHEIMER, editor of xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me and Fairy Tale Review [Lock] has an impressive ability to create a unique and original world. --BRIAN EVENSON, author of Windeye and Immobility Lock is one of our great miniaturists, to be read only a single time at one's peril. --TIM HORVATH, author of Understories

Praise for Norman Lock [Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights. --NPR One of the most interesting writers out there. -- Reader's Digest Our finest modern fabulist. -- Bookslut A master storyteller. -- Largehearted Boy [A] contemporary master of the form [and] virtuosic fabulist. -- Flavorwire A master of the unusual. -- Slice magazine Lock's work mines the stuff of dreams.. -- Rumpus One could spend forever worming through [Lock's] magicked words, their worlds. -- Believer No other writer in recent memory, lives up to [Whitman's] declaration that behind every book there is a hand reaching out to us, a hand to be held onto, a hand that has the power to touch us, to make us feel. --Detroit Metro Times Lock is a rapturous storyteller, and his tales are never less than engrossing. -- Kenyon Review Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth. -- Shelf Awareness Lock plays profound tricks, with language--his is crystalline and underline-worthy. -- Publishers Weekly Lock's stories stir time as though it were a soup . . . beyond the entertainment lie 21st-century conundrums: What really exists? Are we each, ultimately, alone and lonely? Where is technology taking humankind? -- Kirkus Reviews I can't think of another author who takes such evident, vocal delight in bending the laws of physics and geography (to say nothing of his flouting of various narratological and fictional norms). You can feel the joy leaping off the page. -- Full Stop [Lock] is not engaged in either homage or pastiche but in an intense dialogue with a number of past writers about the process of writing, and the nature of fiction itself . . . taking a trope that seems familiar to readers of the weird but analysing it in the fiercest detail. -- Weird Fiction [Lock's] window onto fiction [is] a welcome one: at once referential and playful, occupying a similar post-Borges space to the short stories of Stephen Millhauser and Neil Gaiman. -- Vol. 1 Brooklyn All hail Lock, whose narrative soul sings fairy tales, whose language is glass. --KATE BERNHEIMER, editor of xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me and Fairy Tale Review [Lock] has an impressive ability to create a unique and original world. --BRIAN EVENSON, author of Windeye and Immobility Lock is one of our great miniaturists, to be read only a single time at one's peril. --TIM HORVATH, author of Understories

Advance Praise for American Meteor [ American Meteor ] feels like a campfire story, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right. -- Publishers Weekly ( Pick of the Week starred review) Praise for Norman Lock [Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights. --NPR One of the most interesting writers out there. -- Reader's Digest Our finest modern fabulist. -- Bookslut A master storyteller. -- Largehearted Boy [A] contemporary master of the form [and] virtuosic fabulist. -- Flavorwire A master of the unusual. -- Slice magazine Lock's work mines the stuff of dreams. -- Rumpus One could spend forever worming through [Lock's] magicked words, their worlds. -- Believer No other writer in recent memory, lives up to [Whitman's] declaration that behind every book there is a hand reaching out to us, a hand to be held onto, a hand that has the power to touch us, to make us feel. --Detroit Metro Times Lock is a rapturous storyteller, and his tales are never less than engrossing. -- Kenyon Review Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth. -- Shelf Awareness Lock plays profound tricks, with language--his is crystalline and underline-worthy. -- Publishers Weekly Lock's stories stir time as though it were a soup . . . beyond the entertainment lie 21st-century conundrums: What really exists? Are we each, ultimately, alone and lonely? Where is technology taking humankind? -- Kirkus Reviews Lock's writing is beautiful, with clean, clear, perfect sentences . . . seducing the reader with language and narrative into a fully realized alternative world. -- Shelf Awareness for Readers I can't think of another author who takes such evident, vocal delight in bending the laws of physics and geography (to say nothing of his flouting of various narratological and fictional norms). You can feel the joy leaping off the page. -- Full Stop [Lock] is not engaged in neither homage or pastiche but in an intense dialogue with a number of past writers about the process of writing, and the nature of fiction itself . . . taking a trope that seems familiar to readers of the weird but analysing it in the fiercest detail. -- Weird Fiction [Lock's] window onto fiction [is] a welcome one: at once referential and playful, occupying a similar post-Borges space to the short stories of Stephen Millhauser and Neil Gaiman. -- Vol. 1 Brooklyn All hail Lock, whose narrative soul sings fairy tales, whose language is glass. --KATE BERNHEIMER, editor of xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me and Fairy Tale Review [Lock] has an impressive ability to create a unique and original world. --BRIAN EVENSON, author of Windeye and Immobility Lock is one of our great miniaturists, to be read only a single time at one's peril. --TIM HORVATH, author of Understories

Author Information

"Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Lock's recent works of fiction include the short story collection Love Among the Particles, a Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year, and three books in The American Novels series: The Boy in His Winter, a re-envisioning of Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that Scott Simon of NPR's Weekend Edition hailed for ""make[ing] Huck and Jim so real you expect to get messages from them on your iPhone;"" American Meteor, an homage to Walt Whitman and William Henry Jackson named a Firecracker Award finalist and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year; and The Port-Wine Stain, a ""mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered."" (New York Times Book Review) homage to Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mutter. Lock lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series: A Fugitive in Walden Woods, his homage to Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Wreckage of Eden, his homage to Emily Dickinson, and Feast Day of the Cannibals, his homage to Herman Melville."

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