Come Sunday [Paperback]

Bradford Morrow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1989

A densely layered journey into the dark heart of the American Dream that spans continents and centuries

In Bradford Morrow’s debut novel, lightning-tongued mercenary Peter Krieger travels to Nicaragua to kidnap a man who may be a 480-year-old former conquistador—and therefore could hold the secret to immortality. When Krieger attempts to sell his captive to a reclusive scientist in upstate New York, he sets off on a globe-spanning expedition, in which he encounters an enormous cast of idealists, crackpots, and revolutionaries. And his one-time lover, Hannah Burden, who raises cattle in an illegal loft ranch in Manhattan, still stands between him and his nefarious, astonishing ambitions.

 

A rousingly hilarious, yet tragic epic about the dark side of the American Dream, Come Sunday is fueled by Morrow’s captivating style, breadth of reference, and depth of insight, and spins old myths of the New World into unexpected and haunting forms.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the center of this highly charged, densely allusive first novel is a primitive spirited out of the Nicaraguan jungle, who may or may not be Cristobal de Olid, a 480-year-old escapee from Cortes's army. His captor is Peter Krieger, a sleazy, fast-talking opportunist who is trying to sell the man he calls "It" to a mysterious American. From this intriguing transaction emerges a tale that unspools in ever-widening circles to encompass Matteo Lupi, an Italian ex-terrorist who escorts de Olid north; Hannah Burden, who houses them on the cattle ranch she runs secretly from a Manhattan warehouse; and Jonathan Berkeley, scion of a decaying New England family that is complex enough to merit a novel of its own. The author skitters back and forth across decades, continents and narrative voices with a speed that often renders his plot impenetrable, and Krieger's rambling comic meditations on everything from Diderot to Bullwinkle wear thin. But the scope and authority of Morrow's writing and the power of his bitter, death-haunted characters make this a notable debut, even when it stalls.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Krieger is simply a businessman, or so he explains his dark dealings as black marketeer of Central American national treasures. Now he is shipping a 400-year-old tribal chief to Owen Berkeley's home on the Hudson. He has a perfect plan, including a satchel of heroin, but he doesn't count on Berkeley's children interfering, his courier's catharsis, and his partner's double cross. Though an ambitious attempt to form a many-faceted text into a coherent whole around the mercenary Krieger, this first novel is tediously overwritten and burdened with plot lines that seem mere afterthoughts. A warehouse farm in Chelsea is an interesting idea, but Morrow can't make more of it than gratuitous self-indulgence. Not a good selection come Monday, come Tuesday, etcetera.Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Collier Books; 1st Collier Books ed edition (April 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 002023001X
• ISBN-13: 978-0020230014
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,029,807 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.