Sweet Land Stories [Hardcover]

E. L. Doctorow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2004

One of America’s premier writers, the bestselling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and World’s Fair turns his astonishing narrative powers to the short story in five dazzling explorations of who we are as a people and how we live.

Ranging over the American continent from Alaska to Washington, D.C., these superb short works are crafted with all the weight and resonance of the novels for which E. L. Doctorow is famous. You will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”). And in the stunning “Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden,” you will witness a special agent of the FBI finding himself at a personal crossroads while investigating a grave breach of White House security.

Two of these stories have already won awards as the best fiction of the year published in American periodicals, and two have been chosen for annual best-story anthologies.
Composed in a variety of moods and voices, these remarkable portrayals of the American spiritual landscape show a modern master at the height of his powers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As one might expect of Doctorow, the title is ironic. In settings that range across the U.S., most of the alienated characters in the five stories here find life anything but sweet as they struggle to surmount the stigmas of poverty, lack of education and their instincts to gamble against the odds. Three of the male protagonists are passive and amoral; attempting to defend their irrational behavior, each reminds himself that he is not stupid. All of themâ€"a young grifter who dutifully abets his mother's murderous greed on a farm near Chicago ("A House on the Plains"); a love-besotted accessory to a kidnapping in California (the slyly humorous "Baby Wilson"); and a cuckolded member of a religious cult commune in Kansas ("Walter John Harmon")â€"share a capacity for self-delusion and self-preservation. The two female protagonists attempt to alter fate and find themselves buffeted by the inescapable force of male power. The protagonist of "Jolene: A Life" is forced into a cross-country hegira in pursuit of a sweet land where she won't be an outsider. Scared and desperate despite her cool facade, Jolene becomes a victim in every relationship. If the story's denouement veers too close to soap opera, Doctorow's empathetic character portrayal redeems the plot twists. The most riveting narrative, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden," describes a presidential administration that is secretive, arrogant and contemptuous of ordinary citizens. In this knowing treatment of the cynical abuse of power, Doctorow uses the spare, laconic style endemic to thrillers and builds suspense with sure strokes. Boring like a laser into the failures of the American dream, he captures the resilience of those who won't accept defeat.
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From Bookmarks Magazine

Each critic professes great respect for Doctorow, who, at age 73 and many awards later, has earned it. However, there the split begins. Many critics hail these stories, four of which were published previously in The New Yorker, as an achievement that perfectly captures the American nation’s mood, its aberrant characters, and dark underbelly. But others dismiss the book as a slim, shallow effort that does not live up to Doctorow’s past work. Common complaints? “A House on the Plains” doesn’t fit in with the other four stories, and “Child, Found Dead in the Rose Garden,” which could have been a powerful political piece, doesn’t live up to its promise.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (May 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400062047
• ISBN-13: 978-1400062041
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,315,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

E. L. Doctorow's novels include The March, City of God, The Waterworks, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, and Billy Bathgate. His work has been published in thirty-two languages. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. E. L. Doctorow lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doctorow Delivers Gripping Stories about the Ordinary Man, September 20, 2004

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sweet Land Stories (Hardcover)

SWEET LAND STORIES is another superlative venture for E.L. Doctorow, one of the very finest writers in the country. Though known best for his larger tomes that mingle history and fiction as well as anyone has ever done, this small book of five stories reveals a master in creating characters and stories in a few pages that become indelible in the reader's mind. In his hands the most apparently simple settings become backdrops for complex, extensive tapestries that reveal how the 'little man/woman' can be pitched and tossed into the most bizarre tangle of events and yet somehow survive. In a time when many of us worry about the spiritual vacuum of life in the 21st Century, when the individual seems buried in the media pile of homogenation, look to Doctorow's fertile mind to remember and perhaps redefine the role of the Everyman. These stories are varied and extraordinarily well written: 'A House on the Plains' seems to be a tale of survival found in fleeing an urban center to a new life for a family on the plains, only to become a wholly different surprising macabre tale in the end: 'Baby Wilson' focuses on a couple who walk out a hospital with someone else's baby, flee, and watch their lives mutate; 'Walter John Harmon' concerns a community of brainwashed folk under the influence of a Spiritual Leader and the consequences of manipulation in the religion realm; 'Jolene: A Life' follows the course of an abused orphan through the country as she moves from one bad husband to the next - holding our hearts in her hand; 'Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden' is Doctorow's indictment of the credibility gap in the White House management of Intelligence sharing - a different and terrifying aside on terrorism so much in focus today. Doctorow tells these stories with elegant prose, terse and delicate economy, and once again proves he can spin a yarn better than most writers active today. A Brilliant Collection!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Stories..., November 6, 2005

By 

Mercedes L. Johnmeyer "The Most Happy" (Summerville, SC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sweet Land Stories (Hardcover)

I've said I don't know how many times that I really don't like short stories. But every now and then I'll pick up a short story book, and I'm usually always disappointed. Well, not this time. These 5 stories grab your attention from start to finish.

The first...A House On The Plains, is the tale of a mother and son and their murderous means of living, and how they continue to get away with it. The second...Baby Wilson, is the story of two lovers. A shady man, and a delusional woman who kidnaps a newborn child and tries to pass it off as their own, while the man finds a way to get them out of the mess she created.

The third...Jolene: A Life, was my favorite. We meet Jolene at the age of fifteen. An orphan who over the span of 10 yrs. goes through three husbands, a stint in a psychiatric hospital, a mobster boyfriend, living the high life, being homeless, and countless jobs, some pretty gritty. The fourth...Walter John Harmon, is an inside look at life in a cult. Members give all their wealth and possessions to 'prophet' Walter John Harmon in exchange for a peaceful and clean community. But they are so disillusioned, they cannot comprehend when he betrays them.

And finally...Child, Dead, In The Rose Garden. This was my least favorite. A dead child is found in the White House Rose Garden after an event. Special Agent Molloy sets out trying to find the answers as to who, why, and how this act was carried out. I definitely recommend this book. The stories are short and very intense. I will most certainly be giving more of Mr. Doctorow's books a chance.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping Tales of Life on the Fringes, October 16, 2004

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sweet Land Stories (Hardcover)

Short stories are quite a challenge. You have to establish characters, mood, setting, conflict and context quickly. Then you have to move forward surely to your target with little wasted effort. If you accomplish all that, you only succeed if the story teaches you something that you find compelling. By those standards, the five stories in Sweet Land Stories are a tour de force.

I was surprised to find this because I find Mr. Doctorow's novels to move in a very leisurely pace. But here, that pace turns into just the right speed.

What the stories have in common is that you enter into worlds that operate at the fringes of society rather than near their center. So your characters have different problems than you and I think about every day. They also have unique solutions to their problems. The shift in focus is so complete that it's almost like reading science fiction. But the shift has a tether back to our lives . . . a tether that makes the lessons universal for us all. It's very impressive.

In the first story, A House on the Plains, we have an attractive mother and her son who find themselves living on a farm they don't know how to operate after the mother's husband died in Chicago. The mother likes men. What they do next will surprise you with its chilling elements. The story is told from the perspective of the son which makes it quite macabre. What is our responsibility to our parents . . . and to our fellow humans?

Baby Wilson will haunt you. A young woman decides to kidnap a baby. She's convinced the baby is hers. How will her boyfriend deal with this? You will find yourself in the shoes of the boyfriend as you share his dilemma. How do you protect the baby and your girlfriend?

Walter John Harmon takes you deeply into the spiritual life of a cult whose messianic leader is under siege. How will the challenges of that siege affect the leader and the cult? You experience the story from the perspective of a cult member who is a lawyer trying to protect the cult. The story raises fine questions about self-deception that we all practice.

Jolene: A Life is a very sad story. Born with beauty but few other advantages, Jolene floats like a wood chip atop the roiling waters of life. As her beauty is used up, she finds herself falling below the water line. And ultimately, she finds out what it is to love and lose. You see life as Jolene sees it.

Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden is a cynical look at the ethics of powerful politicians and business people that will leave you gasping with its pain. You see this from the perspective of an investigator into the unexplained death of a child in the White House's Rose Garden.

I don't remember a more compelling set of short stories written since the turn of the century. Don't miss them!