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Cloudsplitter
Russell Banks. HarperCollins: 1999 (paperback). ISBN: 0060930861. 758.
Guide not available
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What would it be like to be the son of the country's most notorious activist,
terrorist, and martyr? Banks attempts to answer this question in his portrait of Owen Brown, the only son to survive
John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry. Banks cautions us in an author's note that this is a work of the imagination,
not a version of history, but this vividly detailed, thoroughly researched novel feels more real and moves more deeply
than any factual account of John Brown one could imagine. Owen's struggle to make sense of his own identity, so utterly
formed by his father's overwhelming personality and strength of belief, is as fascinating for those interested in the
irrevocable bonds of family as it is for those intrigued by the social and political atmosphere that prevailed in the
years before the Civil War. A finalist for the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award.
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