"A pungent satire of human gullibility, this fierce, upbeat novel is a timely restorative in a dark season." —Malachy McCourt
The Cardiff Giant, set in Cooperstown, New York, has up its novelistic sleeve Puck's profound declaration, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Jess Freeman, investigative reporter, arrives on the scene to look into the weird disappearance from the Farmers' Museum of a huge human figure. He had been unearthed in the late nineteenth century near Cardiff, New York. Jess confronts locals and outsiders who all have a theory, including that the giant has been reanimated and is lurching throughout the community. They are enmeshed in self-punishing belief systems such as alien abduction, astrology, kabbalistic numerology, New Age rebirthing, and religious dogmas reduced to literal absurdities. The fast-paced action centers around episodes where they pay a sorry price for their beliefs. But skeptics don't fare much better, susceptible as they are to mental disorders that show the faculty of reason is fragile indeed. These characters group and regroup, with romance always on their minds, and finally come to recognitions at once surprising and moving.
Also available in hardcover.
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Author(s)
Larry Lockridge
Larry Lockridge is a writer living in New York City. Professor Emeritus of English, New York University, and a Guggenheim Fellow, he is best known for the prizewinning biography of his father, Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., author of Raintree Count
Marcia Scanlon
Marcia Scanlon, painter, sculptor and poet, has studios in Soho and Upstate New York. She has been represented by John Stoller, Gettler-Paul, Maxwell Davidson, and Central Booking. Her artwork is in personal, corporate, library, and museum collections here and abroad.