Hot Springs [Paperback]

Geoffrey Becker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2010

Vibrant, sexy, and quite possibly crazy, Bernice is determined to reclaim the child she gave up for adoption five years ago. She convinces her boyfriend, Landis, to help carry out her plan, but once the abduction is accomplished, Bernice—whose own mother was given to manic episodes and strange behavior—is plagued with doubts. Will Landis stay with her, given her volatile personality and his own drifter past? Will she and Landis both end up in jail for this crime? And, perhaps most importantly, will she fail at being a mother? Dovetailed with this is the story of the conservative Christian adoptive parents, Tessa and David, and the effect the kidnapping has on their troubled marriage. As Bernice and Landis journey across America, from Colorado Springs to Tucson to Baltimore, Bernice must confront her past and the secrets she has kept.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his incisive latest, Becker (2008 Flannery O'Conner Prize–winner for Black Elvis) recounts the misadventures of Bernice Click, a volatile young woman determined to raise the biological daughter she gave up for adoption. With the help of her boyfriend, Bernice kidnaps five-year-old Emily from her adoptive parents in Colorado and ends up in Baltimore, where she attempts to make a new life for herself and the girl. Meanwhile, Tessa Harding, Emily's adoptive mother, tries to recover Emily without involving authorities. Struggling with the revelation of her husband's indifference to the child, not to mention his adultery and increasingly sadistic behavior, Tessa embarks on a riveting adventure. The novel relies on a far-fetched coincidence to launch Tessa's mission, but resulting scenes are sufficiently tense and thought provoking to justify the stretch, while Becker's portrayal of Tessa's faith is moving and psychologically complex. As desperation mounts on all sides, Becker piles on devastating events, creating a remarkably taut narrative and a rousing testament to humanity's capacity for resilience. Nobody gets off the hook, though they do find uneasy deliverance in unexpected places. (Feb.)
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Review

"Geoffrey Becker's fantastic Hot Springs works hard to conceal its own scope and ambition, but the book's coyness (not to mention its humor) only heightens the uncanny, moving power of the question at its core: When it comes down to it, how far will people go for love?...Throughout the novel, characters ignore their own better judgments, creating a thrilling psychological drama that unfolds alongside the external events and creates space for the unexpected on virtually ever page. Becker has a gift for surprises...Becker's technical expertise and natural storytelling gifts are difficult to deny, as is his admirably muted sense of the absurd...Of all the reasons to be excited about Hot Springs, though, the book's strange and fresh treatment of love itself is the best...it's a taut meditation on letting go and a convincing reminder that love, for all the destruction it can cause, can usually rebuild just about anything."—Patrick Somerville, The New York Times Book Review

"In his incisive latest, Becker (2008 Flannery O'Conner Prize–winner for Black Elvis) recounts the misadventures of Bernice Click, a volatile young woman determined to raise the biological daughter she gave up for adoption. With the help of her boyfriend, Bernice kidnaps five-year-old Emily from her adoptive parents in Colorado and ends up in Baltimore, where she attempts to make a new life for herself and the girl. Meanwhile, Tessa Harding, Emily's adoptive mother, tries to recover Emily without involving authorities. Struggling with the revelation of her husband's indifference to the child, not to mention his adultery and increasingly sadistic behavior, Tessa embarks on a riveting adventure. The novel relies on a far-fetched coincidence to launch Tessa's mission, but resulting scenes are sufficiently tense and thought provoking to justify the stretch, while Becker's portrayal of Tessa's faith is moving and psychologically complex. As desperation mounts on all sides, Becker piles on devastating events, creating a remarkably taut narrative and a rousing testament to humanity's capacity for resilience. Nobody gets off the hook, though they do find uneasy deliverance in unexpected places."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"In Hot Springs, his rollicking new novel, Geoffrey Becker has assembled a delicate collage of damaged souls...Becker gives them to us with such earnest and empathetic insight that he makes us root for even the most ungracious among them."—Rachel Rosenblit, ELLE

"The dichotomy of Bernice and Landis is the sort of thing that makes for great fiction..."—Time Out Chicago

"Geoffrey Becker gets you in fast and deep to the humor and the danger of the situation." —latimes.com

"Becker's skills as a writer grow increasingly apparent as he lures readers into understanding and empathizing with each of the book's characters despite their flaws and misdeeds."—Colorado Springs Independent

"Becker also balances Hot Springs’ momentum with keen insights, creating a terrific tension between the characters’ hunt for faith and redemption and their more profane cravings."—The Rumpus.net

"'Bernice was ten when her mother walked around the block naked,' Becker starts out, neatly drawing the reader into a world where the division between normal and crazy is razor thin."—The Oregonian

"Becker is a phenomenal storyteller; only a writer of his caliber could have pulled this off so well."—Sacramento Book Review

"As the plot unfolds, readers are inexorably drawn into the narrative and are compelled to keep reading to learn the ultimate outcome...Becker demonstrates great skill in depicting distasteful characters whose unhappy experiences are so morbidly fascinating and so bloated with perplexing uncertainty as to provide their own uniquely tainted attraction." —Morton I. Teicher, ForeWord
"You won’t trust a person in this book but it’s hard to look away. People
may be feckless and unreliable in the big ways, but their longing for
children drives them without relent. Hot Springs is a road trip layered
with desire and mistake and the impossibility of keeping a secret from
rising through the years." —Ron Carlson, author of The Signal

"Like the first dip into the searing mineral soup for which the book is named, the first pages of Hot Springs shock and lure...Ultimately, Hot Springs is a beautifully crafted novel with a tightly woven yet unconventional storyline...the characters shape and propel the plot, yet eventually, that plot allows for the full development of the characters themselves." —Christy Corp-Minamiji, Blogcritics.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 301 pages
• Publisher: Tin House Books; 1 edition (February 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982053940
• ISBN-13: 978-0982053942
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #974,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Geoffrey Becker's latest novel, Hot Springs (Tin House, 2010), was a Sunday New York Times Editors' Choice, and his recent story collection, Black Elvis (U. of Georgia Press,2009), won the 2008 Flannery O'Connor Prize for Short Fiction. His previous books are: Dangerous Men, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995),a collection which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; and Bluestown, a novel (St. Martin's Press, 1996). His story, "Black Elvis," was selected by E.L. Doctorow for The Best American Short Stories, 2000. Other awards he has received include the Parthenon Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize from the Chicago Tribune, a James Michener Fellowship, an NEA fellowship, a Heekin Foundation fellowship, two Maryland Arts Council Awards, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award for best first book of fiction.

Born in Boston, Geoff grew up in Princeton, NJ, and attended Colby College in Maine, where he majored in English, and also studied music. In the early '80s, he lived in Brooklyn, NY, where he played guitar and performed both solo and in various bands at venues including The Lone Star Cafe, O'Lunney's Country Music City, and the Eagle Tavern. Later, he earned an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was also active on the local music scene. He teaches fiction writing at Towson University, and in the low-residency MFA program of Queens University, Charlotte.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Long, strange trip, April 21, 2010

By 

Curmudgeonly Doc (Central Valley, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hot Springs (Paperback)

A strong 4.

Quirky characters (including a child) take off on a hasty road trip, which certainly made me think of The Flying Troutmans, as well as Little Miss Sunshine.

Contrary to opinions on another website, I think the author does a very good job of making the major characters feel real, thus making the reader interested in what will happen to them, flawed as they are.

Maybe the plot isn't totally believable, relying on too much coincidence to move things along. And we don't get fully into the mind of the adoptive mother right away, so it's hard to understand why she didn't go right to the police, but I think that gives us a clue to her character; she knew what had happened, and was practicing what she preached and believed. Of course, this is set in contrast to her hypocritical husband, who like some other lesser characters was more one dimensional. It might have taken many pages and subplots to bring them out more, and that might have detracted from the main story.

Overall, an entertaining and heartfelt read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly enjoyable, March 18, 2011

By 

Gentle Reader (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hot Springs (Paperback)

I actually read this book in one sitting. It took me about seven hours, but I was sick and had nothing to do so I plucked this off of my "to read" pile and had at it. I totally lost myself in this story. There was just something that resonated in it for me.

It is pretty much about a young woman who kidnaps her own child five years after she gave her up for adoption. It's an on the run story, a finding yourself story, just a life story, really, but with very real seeming characters populating it. Bernice, the young woman, and her boyfriend both seem like people I've met, and really everyone else, even the people who are only there for two pages, are fleshed out and believable. And there's more than a smattering of humor as well. The only let down in my view was the last page. I thought it wrapped up oddly. Everything else was engaging and felt true within the context of the story (yes, even the adoptive mom's choices. They make sense for her character after you get to know her).

I was surprised to see another reviewer here say they put it down after the first 50 pages or so. I just found it so interesting and rewarding. I'm not even joking when I write that it made me laugh AND cry. I credit my emotional response to the author's sense of relationships and despair along with a keen ability to set a place and time. I had a similar response when I read the Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks (don't worry -- nothing like THAT happens here). I was drawn in.

Anyway, I loved it and I highly recommend!

5.0 out of 5 stars A crazy ride you'll be glad you took, January 23, 2011

By 

Marlana Portolano (Takoma Park, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hot Springs (Paperback)

As an adoptive mom with a history involving plenty of birth-mother drama and, yes, even a missing child, I was cautious when I began Becker's book. But once I got to know his characters, I found them so believable and the situation so absurd and lovely that I was happy to be taken along for the ride. His style is relaxed but never dull -- laid back is probably the best way to describe it -- and yet it has a maturity that takes into acount the whole human spectrum of personal love and loyalty. The book is very good at considering how secrets of our past can drive us to strange behavior, and certain unexpected details in his scenes are so funny they'll make your day.