Coiled in the Heart [Hardcover]

Scott Elliott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 24, 2003

From a bold new Southern voice, a graceful and provocative love story born of guilt and atonement.

One day, seven-year-old Tobia Caldwell-the last in a line of proud, if declining, Southern aristocrats-discovers a cottonmouth snake in a creek on the family's shrinking estate. Soon afterward, he meets Ben Wilson, a boy his age, who has moved into one of the first houses in a subdivision going up on what used to be Caldwell land. Imagining he is defending him-self and his creek against a bully and an intruder, Tobia leads Ben into a deadly encounter with the cottonmouth and discovers, with Ben's twin sister, Merritt, the boy's lifeless body facedown in the creek.

Years later, Tobia reencounters Merritt-and the bond be-tween them, forged out of their first, immediate experience of death, is electric. As he falls in love with her, Tobia must struggle with the guilty secret of his childhood, and, ultimately, come to terms with the truth of his past.

Smart, sophisticated, and luminous, Coiled in the Heart wrestles with the integration of the old and the new, while exploring the force of love; the eccentricities of family; the power of guilt; and the cumbersome, though stabilizing, weight of the past.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Tobias Caldwell lives in a world balanced by the scales of grandeur and decay. The southern plantation he calls home has been the pride of the Caldwells since their settling there in the nineteenth century. As a boy, Tobias knew every crevice of the landscape, but he favored the creek to be his very own. By the time Tobias reached the age of seven, his father had begun to parcel off the land to new housing subdivisions, and the magical creek no longer belonged to Tobias alone. Soon they had neighbors, and Tobias was dispatched to meet a boy who was just his age. What Tobias encountered was an unruly, mean-spirited boy named Ben Wilson and his twin sister, Merritt. Ben's relentless cruelty brings malice into Tobias' good-natured heart, and he leads Ben to the creek, where the tree roots snarl and the cottonmouth snake coils itself for camouflage. Elliot's debut builds a magnetic love story between Tobias and Merritt that is heady with yearning and laden with guilt for the truths left untold. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Coiled in the Heart is a big, sprawling ambitious debut. -- Helen Schulman, author of P.S.

Elliot's voice is his own, and with any luck it will speak to us many times in the years to come. -- Steve Yarbrough, author of The Oxygen Man and Visible Spirits

Scott Elliott is a strong new talent. His novel Coiled in the Heart is vital and vivid. -- Elizabeth Spencer

Scott Elliott's Coiled in the Heart is far too wonderful and self-assured to be a first novel. -- Pat Conroy

This is an auspicious fiction debut. -- Robert Phillips

…while remaining wholly original, Coiled in the Heart marks the emergence of a very real and durable talent. -- Michael Knight, author of Goodnight, Nobody

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 293 pages
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons (July 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399150382
• ISBN-13: 978-0399150388
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,221,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Elliott was born in Lexington, Kentucky and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. He was educated at Vanderbilt University, Columbia University, and the University of Houston. His stories and essays have been published in the Antioch Review, Forklift Ohio, Hawk and Handsaw, the New York Times, Juked, the Writers Chronicle, Mayday, and elsewhere. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington where he lives with his wife Jenna Terry and their two sons August and Harper.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Read, October 21, 2003

By 

W. Garner Traher Jr. "enjoy books" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coiled in the Heart (Hardcover)

I knew nothing about this book until I saw it featured in a book review of our Sunday newspaper. I am very glad that I purchased and read this book.

This new author has not published some "spy or mystery" novel as so many other authors need to do; rather, he has purlished a wonderful book about conflicts of people, young and old, parents and children, children and children, and man and woman. His descriptons of the places and characters of his book are detailed and wonderful and keep the reader in "visual" contact with the story. The emotions of the characters and the subtle twists of fate are very believable by the reader.

This is a wonderful read. It is a great change from the standard and mostly predictable books that are now being published and affords the reader with an enjoyable story and time spent with the characters.

It is unfortunate that this novel is a first time book by an unknown author. If it was published by a more famous author it would receive the attention it deserves. I just hope that Mr. Elliott does not attempt to revert to standard story lines in his next book, one that I will be anticipating.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New American classic, November 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Coiled in the Heart (Hardcover)

Elliott's characters are rich with emotion and detail without being overwrought. Not only is this an entertaining read, but it has something important to say about being human. A must read!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delightful Change of Pace, April 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Coiled in the Heart (Hardcover)

"Coiled in the Heart" sweeps the reader along with its melancholy nostalgia -- the Big E's lyrical passages are worth revisiting again and again. Elliott builds his wonderfully poignant story of loss and penance to an ending that is both hopeful yet enigmatic; we hope for the best for our hero, yet we can't help fearing the worst.

Told in a series of flashbacks from the present day to events in the distant and not-too-distant past, Tobia's story is one of struggling to overcome several obstacles -- the weight of family history, the adoration lavished on a sports hero who doesn't feel the same love for the game, the hurdle of his own potential, and, worst of all, the crushing guilt of a dirty trick gone horribly, horribly wrong. At times almost paralyzed by fear and self-doubt, Tobia seeks for his true calling and is always asking the deep question -- is this what I am meant to do? Fortunately for the reader, Tobia is suffuciently opaque that what often appears to be the easy answer just isn't enough.

"Coiled in the Heart" would have received five stars, but Elliott made two of his less-than-admirable characters, the Goodhopes, Carolina and Duke grads, and as any Southerner knows, some things are just unforgiveable.