Norman Lock has created a memorable portrait gallery of American subjects, in a succession of audaciously imagined, wonderfully original, and beautifully written novels unlike anything in our literature.
— Joyce Carol Oates
Eden’s Clock
Rendered mute at the Battle of Gettysburg, Frederick Heigold returns to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where he marries a resolute suffragist and resumes his vocation as a clocksmith. Bereft after she dies in a freak accident, he accepts a commission to repair the enormous clock on the San Francisco Embarcadero, but the routine railway journey becomes a six-month odyssey. Finally reaching the Pacific, after having survived imprisonment, shipwreck on Edisto Island, and run-ins with assorted roughnecks and thieves, he happens upon novelist Jack London drinking in the Palace Hotel bar—just before one of the deadliest natural disasters in United States history.
Eden’s Clock, the twelfth and final stand-alone book in The American Novels series, calls into question the American belief in individualism to shape our destiny when confronted with irrepressible, chaotic forces.
Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist
New York Times Book Review “What to Read Next” selection
Washington Post “Historical Fiction to Read” selection
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781954276390
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781954276383
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 Eden’s Clock
Lock’s final title in his resplendent American Novels series . . . poignantly explores the nature of human connection. Rich in period detail and memorable characters, this is a fitting conclusion to the series.
— Booklist
Lock’s skill in crafting an adventure novel . . . would be at home on shelves a century ago. By peppering his narrative with contemporary references and turns-of-phrase evocative of the early twentieth century, Lock succeeds in bringing the era to life.
— Historical Novels Review
Unpredictable, profound. . . . Norman Lock’s Eden’s Clock is for the reader looking for an American Odyssey.
— Call Me [Brackets]
Eden’s Clock is the latest release in Norman Lock’s outstanding American Novels series and perhaps one of the best. Combining the Civil War with the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake is pure genius.
— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)