Search for Harmony [Paperback]

Alan Heuer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 2000

Music and Amtrak bring a young cowboy from his starkly serene landscape of Wyoming to the bustling cacophony of New York City, where he confronts a camouflaged tough, a potential curbside swindler, unsolicited cabby advice, a confounded motel security guard, and New York's never ending need to empty his pockets. The cowboy, knowing little of New York and its challenges to fresh wide-eyed newcomers, finds security and solace in his steady refuge-his clarinet-an instrument that also serves our hero as a magical weapon to disarm a the young tough while also plying his mysterious talent to lure other young lovers into deeper romance, as he himself continues his search for love and harmony. The musical-cowboy theme in this irresistible page-turner is the leitmotif tying together the plot's theme with delightful variation. The story's structure is a music metaphor comprised of 4 sections in 3 parts, with an opening theme and a coda finale. The cowboy's search for harmony accelerates rhythmically from detailed drawn-out events to less detailed accelerated events-almost stretto, a musical device to keep a listener's attention as the author's drama plays on. There's a false cadence (or false ending) in the middle of the story where our cowboy hero seems to have found harmony at last, only to realize it's not the real thing.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ALAN HEUER had to put SEARCH FOR HARMONY to music. His grandfather played sousaphone with John Philip Sousa, his grandmother played Vaudeville in Chicago, his mother plays flute and piano, and his father builds harpsichords in Wyoming. The rhythmic prose of SEARCH FOR HARMONY is itself a music metaphor.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (December 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595163017
• ISBN-13: 978-0595163014
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,090,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Annie Proulx is Alan Heuer, March 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Search for Harmony (Paperback)

As Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in her collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love in CLOSE RANGE: WYOMING STORIES, Alan Heuer masterfully paints similar images with bittersweet humor as his clarinet playing cowboy travels from his beloved Wyoming to study clarinet in NYC. His prose draws you into a "can't put down til it's finished at two in the morning experience"...I'm looking forward to the next Heuer book!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a cowboy, June 1, 2002

By 

Argpolymath "romeo3" (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Search for Harmony (Paperback)

It started out with an intriguing concept, but lost the initial thread when the story backtracked and the focus changed. Could have been an interesting idea, but too many loose ends. Not exactly what I expected and I had a hard time finishing it.