Ariel's Crossing [Hardcover]

Bradford Morrow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2002

When, after years of secrecy, Ariel Rankin learns that her birth father is not who she had always believed he was, but rather a man named Kip Calder who went to Vietnam before she was born and then disappeared into Laos as a covert warrior, her world is shaken to its core. When she herself becomes pregnant by a man who wants no part of parenthood, Ariel realizes she can no longer elude her buried past if she is to have any future. She decides to leave behind her life in New York City and everything she knows to head west to find the mysterious Calder.

Ariel's search will lead her from the holy village of Chimayó, New Mexico, to Los Alamos and the pueblo valley of Nambé, and ultimately across the restricted badlands of the White Sands proving grounds. Morrow conjures an array of dynamic, strong- willed individualists whose own distinct quests for home converge with Ariel's. Audaciously weaving social with magic realism, he offers a rhapsodic portrait of how faith, family, and self-identity are inscribed in each of us, uneasy heritages it is our burden to discover and embrace.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Morrow uses a woman's search to find her father as a vehicle to explore the dual legacies of Los Alamos and Vietnam in his latest, a powerful, multilayered novel in which he revisits a character from Trinity Fields, Kip Calder, who becomes the holy grail of a quest by his daughter, Ariel Rankin. As the novel opens, Rankin is leading a comfortable life as an assistant editor for a Manhattan publisher, but things gets turned upside down in a hurry by a surprise pregnancy, along with the revelation that Brice McCarthy (who also appeared in Trinity Fields) is not her real father. Most of the novel involves Rankin's search for Calder, who survives a bout with illness and a down-and-out stretch when he is taken in by the Montoya family in the remote desert of New Mexico. Rankin's search is complicated by Calder's erratic wanderings, which culminate in an effort to help Delfino Montoya, who worked on the Manhattan Project, recover the ranch that was seized by the government during the military effort. The first half of the novel is near-brilliant, as Morrow sets up a tightly woven network of strong, intriguing characters while crafting evocative chapters about the tumultuous effect of political events on the lives of his protagonists. The novel fades down the stretch, mostly due to overcomplicated subplots, including one involving Rankin and her love interest, Marcos Montoya, while a final confrontation with the government on the ranch is drawn out and labored. These problems aside, this is yet another outstanding, thought-provoking novel from one of America's major literary voices as he continues to explore the issues that made Trinity Fields so compelling and memorable.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Though Morrow begins his novel with a historically and geographically significant conceit that of the ghost of Do$a Francisca de Pe$a, whose story offers us a violent, almost biblical introduction to the land around Chimayo , NM he soon runs headlong into the present and a group of bumbling characters who are considerably less convincing. The intricate plot and subplots coalesce around protagonist Ariel's long search for her father, Kip, who went to fight in Vietnam and disappeared in Laos before her birth. The action starts when, out of the blue, a minor character tells Ariel that she knows "a man who'd be very happy to meet" her. Ariel heads to Chimayo , missing her father only by chance because he has decided, not very convincingly, to martyr himself to a hopeless cause. Unfortunately, Morrow does not capitalize on these ironies or the potential for poignancy here. Instead, the shallow characters and silly plots are submerged by melodrama not unlike that of the daytime soap operas a real surprise from Morrow, founding editor of Conjunctions and author of four previous novels, including The Almanac Branch. Lyle D. Rosdahl, San Antonio P.L., TX
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 389 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (May 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030953
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030958
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,952,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bradford Morrow has lived for the past thirty years in New York City and rural upstate New York, though he grew up in Colorado and lived and worked in a variety of places in between. While in his mid-teens, he traveled through rural Honduras as a member of the Amigos de las Americas program, serving as a medical volunteer in the summer of 1967. The following year he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his last year of high school as a foreign exchange student at a Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1973, he took time off from studying at the University of Colorado to live in Paris for a year. After doing graduate work on a Danforth Fellowship at Yale University, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, where he worked as a bookseller until relocating to New York City in 1981, where he began editing the literary journal "Conjunctions" and writing novels.

His first five novels--"Come Sunday" (1988), "The Almanac Branch" (1992, PEN/Faulkner Award finalist), "Trinity Fields" (Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, 1995), "Giovanni's Gift" (1997) and "Ariel's Crossing" (2002)--are all available as e-books from Open Road Media from January 25, 2011.

In collaboration with eighteen artists, Morrow is the author of "A Bestiary," as well as a book for children, "Didn't Didn't Do It," illustrated by the legendary Gahan Wilson. Morrow has also edited and written a number of other books, including "Posthumes" (poetry), "The New Gothic" (with Patrick McGrath) and "The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth" (with Sam Hamill) and has contributed to many anthologies and journals. As founding editor of "Conjunctions," he has edited over 55 volumes of the journal from 1981 to the present. An anthology on death, "The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death," co-edited with David Shields, will be published by W.W. Norton in February 2011.

His new novel, "The Diviner's Tale," is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the U.S. and in England with Corvus (Atlantic), as well as an audiobook with Blackstone. His first collection of short stories, "Lush," will be published in Fall 2011 by Pegasus Books. He is completing work on his seventh novel, "The Prague Sonata," as well as a book of creative nonfiction works, "Meditations on a Shadow."

Morrow's many awards include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes, as well as the PEN/Nora Magid Award. He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, and Brown Universities and for the past twenty years has been a Bard Center Fellow and professor of literature at Bard College.

Visit his website at www.bradfordmorrow.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Couldn't Put It Down, June 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Ariel's Crossing (Hardcover)

I heard Morrow read last week and bought Ariel's Crossing, and couldn't put this brilliant novel down. He's a great reader and if you have the opportunity to hear him, I suggest that you take it. Not only does Ariel's Crossing ask the most important and troubling questions about the effects of our current nuclear age and its atomic history, but it intelligently explores a woman's search for self and family. How many novels do that? The spiritual center of Ariel's Crossing is stunningly beautiful, compelling, enriching. Reading it is a personal journey into the badlands and beneficence of the human soul.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Long-Awaited Triumph, June 13, 2002

By 

Lizzie Shaw - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ariel's Crossing (Hardcover)

I have been waiting for this book for five years, and it is so worth the wait! I fell in love with Morrow's "Giovanni's Gift" and went on to read everything I could get my hands on, and my favorite was "Trinity Fields", which is the sister book to "Ariel's Crossing". But now that I've read "Ariel's Crossing", it tops my list. Ariel is a wonderful, inspiring young woman whose journey to self-discovery, through some amazing yet completely believable twists of fate, so often resonates for me personally. I also love Franny (aka Mary), who discovers herself by simply re-inventing herself as someone else, and Sarah Montoya, the wise mother who guides her whole family (adopted and otherwise) with wry intelligence. (Not to mention Francisca, the ghost whose very presence seems to make a place home.) Also, Morrow's use of language is sublime---so rich and lush---and yet, unlike so many writers, it enhances his storytelling rather than interfering with it. You really *live* with these characters, you feel like you're walking through the landscapes with them---you're right there on horseback with Ariel when she---but I won't blow it for you--you've got to read this book!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars deep relationship drama, June 8, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ariel's Crossing (Hardcover)

Ariel Rankin grew up in Manhattan thinking that Brice McCarthy was her father. However, recently the Manhattan publisher has learned that Brice is not her biological father, but that Kip Calder had sired her. Stunned with the truth, and single and pregnant, Ariel decides to meet Kip.

In the 1960s Kip impregnated his girlfriend Jessica and fled to Southeast Asia where he became a spy. Brice, irate with his best friend for what he did to Jessica, stepped in and married her, helping her raise Ariel. Now Kip is back home in New Mexico, nearing death and wants to meet his daughter. However, instead of waiting for her, Kip decides to finish his life with one last quest. He is helping widower Delfino Montoya to reclaim the ranch the Feds snatched from her family for those notorious tests in the proving ground.

ARIEL'S CROSSING is a deep relationship drama filled with numerous subplots that draw from the divergent culture that the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear research brought to New Mexico. The story line is action packed though some of the secondary threads take away from the prime theme. Still readers will feel mesmerized as the characters take the audience on a tour of the Land of Enchantment including the pits rarely seen by anyone who is not a Lobo or an Aggie.

Harriet Klausner