Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse’s prophecy for life on earth at the end.
American Meteor
In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny—the second stand-alone book in The American Novels series—Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln’s funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.
By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America’s fabulous and murderous history.
Firecracker Award Finalist
Publishers Weekly “Best Book of the Year” selection
InsideHook “Best Contemporary Western Novels” selection
Bustle “Books to Read if You Hope The Revenant Wins [an Oscar]” selection
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781934137949
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781934137956
Preview American Meteor in Green Mountains Review.
Norman Lock is the author of The Old Man and the Heath: A Novel and Stories (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in March 2027), the dozen volumes of The American Novels series, the short story collection Love Among the Particles, and additional novels, short fiction, poetry, and stage and radio plays. Among other honors, he has won The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and has been longlisted three times for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
visit author page »Praise for American Meteor
[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain’s spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock’s books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.
For a young country, the United States has had a violent and complicated history, one that is brilliantly brought to life by Norman Lock’s American Meteor. An enthralling coming-of-age story that also follows the tale of Manifest Destiny, American Meteor makes history as interesting as the year’s biggest blockbusters.
As the railroad spread across the United States, it became part of the mythology of the American West. So too did photographs of the landscapes, documented by a number of renowned photographers. The protagonist of Norman Lock’s American Meteor, a young man seeking his fortune, comes into contact with both of these strands of the West—but where they lead him is anywhere but familiar.
An adventure tale that practically bleeds Americana. . . . For fans of Little Big Man, this might be the book you didn’t know you were waiting for.
— LitReactor