Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler [Paperback]

Jim Dodge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1991

Annalee Pearce is a pregnant 16-year-old who has been placed in a corrective centre run by nuns for refusing to co-operate with authorities. Once in there, she soon rebels, breaks a sister's jaw with a "roundhouse right" and, when her son Daniel is born, she steals away into the rain.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A short but remarkable life leads wizard-in-training Daniel Pearse to the "junction" (entrance) of the legendary philosopher's stone, but not before this novel chronicles his extraordinary education. Daniel's unwed mother, Annalee, raises him in a shack that serves as the hideout for an ancient counterculture society, the Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws (AMO). Annalee falls for AMO poet Shamus Malloy, whose plot to steal plutonium results in her violent death. Young Daniel, in pursuit of his mother's betrayer, joins AMO and discovers a faculty that includes Wild Bill Weber on meditation and survival; rancher Mott Stocker on sex and drugs; Willie the Click on safecracking; and Bad Bobby Sloane on poker. Daniel wants to learn who betrayed Annalee, but is distracted by the task of stealing a glowing, perfectly spherical diamond from the White Sands Proving Grounds, an easy proposition for the well-schooled youth. But instead of relinquishing the stone to AMO leader Volta, as he had sworn to, Daniel surrenders to total obsession with its mysteries. Aptly subtitled "an alchemical potboiler," and smartly crafted, Dodge's ( Not Fade Away ) third novel may be his first cult classic.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"Potboiler," alchemical or not, is an apt description of this book. Pretentiously divided into four parts labeled Air, Earth, Water, and Fire, it chronicles the life of Daniel Pearse and his waif mother Annalee, who run a safe house for outlaws. One of them, Shamus Malloy, a poet and "alchemist" who dramatically wears a black glove over his scarred hand, leads them into an aborted plutonium heist in which Daniel's mother is killed. The counterculture alchemical secret society (AMO) to which Malloy belongs persuades Daniel to steal a prize diamond from the government. He does, and it is indeed the Philosopher's Stone that renders Daniel divine and annihilates the thieves who have used him. A fair idea, but hardly worth 373 pages of sex, violence, contrivances, and obscenities.
- Kenneth Mintz, formerly with Bayonne P.L.,
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 355 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr (May 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871134543
• ISBN-13: 978-0871134547
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,701,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book So Good, I Co-opted the Title as My Alias, September 21, 2000

By 

Stone Junction "The Suburban Hobo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Junction (Paperback)

There are few more enjoyable pleasures in this world than being caught completely off-guard by a novel. I picked up STONE JUNCTION at a discount book sale, drawn in by the jacket, and the price. I began reading it with absolutely no preconceived notions as to its content, or worth.

By the end of the story, I knew that this was my favorite novel of all time.

It's the story of Daniel Pearce, an orphaned youngster who is brought under the guidance of some of the most off-kilter and bizarre people imaginable. While this may reek of HARRY POTTER, this is most assuredly a story for adults.

STONE JUNCTION is about the world behind the world, the people we sledom get to know. It is a world of crime, and conspiracies, and greed, and love, and magic. That author Jim Dodge holds it all together is a fine feat in and of itself, but he does more than that; he makes the reader yearn for this life. Although (in my edition) he states emphatically that the novel is a work of fiction ("Believe otherwise at your peril"), Dodge's world is so well-defined that it's difficult not to wish it existed.

The novel also has that one remaining aspect that so many novels, even the truly great ones, lack; it left me wanting more.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You'll get the wrong idea, August 2, 2000

By 

peter wild - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Junction (Paperback)

If I tell you about road trips, CIA assassins, secret organisations and faulty bombs, you'll get the wrong idea. Let's face it, if I tell you "this is a story about . . ."(whatever), I'm steering you wrong. You'll get the wrong idea. Because, alongside the road trips and the faulty bombs, you've got spherical diamonds, alchemists, poker, group sex, pirate DJs, Vietnam vets searching for Death, houseboats, insane women with imaginary children, religious visions, delirious rats eating horses and a man who talks to his silver hand. You can't do justice to a Jim Dodge novel without the aid of diagrams, semaphore, hard whisky and drugs smoked in an oven-baked clay pipe. Ideally, you need to be sat outside a tepee in the middle of a desert at night watching the stars and thinking about how difficult it is to really understand anything (man).

Ostensibly, this is a book about Daniel Pearse. When his mother is killed planting a diversionary bomb to help her boyfriend Shamus steal plutonium (see what I told you?), Daniel is introduced to the AMO. What the AMO is depends on who you are. Different people tell it different ways. Let's say it stands for alchemists, magicians and outlaws. That's pretty close. AMO arrange for Daniel to learn all of the important lessons : farming dope, safe-cracking, poker, meditation and the art of disguise. He also learns how to disappear and remain invisible. Daniel employs these skills to find his mother's killer and steal the spherical diamond I told you about before. As you do.

The whys and wherefores are less important than the hows. You know when lightning strikes, that pure blue electrical fuzz that sounds like aspirins in a glass of water and looks like cut telegraph wire in the rain? Jim Dodge writes like that pure blue electric fuzz. He fair knocks you off your feet and turns your hair white. "Stone Junction" is like Edward Hopper doing Hieronymous Bosch. It's "The Karate Kid" meets "Vanishing Point". Barry Gifford doing Richard Brautigan. Rothko painting "Guernica". You're in a world of impersonations and sleight of hand. It's a novel made up of people sawn in half by magicians and swallowed by fish. It's a novel about disappearing and the effects of speed-spiked maple pancakes. It's like Brad Dourif in "Wise Blood". Homer's "Odyssey" after a good kicking from Ken Kesey and Mark Twain.

In Big Star's "13", Alex Chilton asks "Would you be an outlaw for my love?" It's one of the big questions. This is the kind of book that makes you want to say yes, and keep on saying yes.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Read, July 3, 2003

By 

VoraciousReader (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Junction (Paperback)

STONE JUNCTION is one of those books where you never know what is going to happen next. It's best to read it without knowing anything about it beforehand so you can charge through it wildly, marveling at this author's vivid imagination. The story takes a mother, her son, and a group of diverse characters all over the US on an outrageous scheme. It is described as an alchemical potboiler, which it clearly is, so expect magical and inexplicable events. I found this book in London where one of the staff from the bookstore had recommended it. I'm so glad!