Sweet Land Stories

by E.L. Doctorow

The five stories in this collection include "Jolene: A Life" (about a young woman's disillusion with American pop culture and her search for a place where she can fit in) and "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden" (a sad tale with political overtones, narrated by an FBI agent). E. L. Doctorow's title, SWEET LAND STORIES, resonates in the selections here, each of which punctures the sweetness of the American Dream with a dose of hard reality as the characters cope with such distinctly sour problems as poverty, ignorance, and self-delusion. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.

Available editions of Sweet Land Stories

	9781400062041, Hardcover, Random House Inc, 2004 $1.00 (Used - Good) Other copies of 9781400062041

	9780812971774, Paperback, Random House Inc, 2005 $1.30 (New) Other copies of 9780812971774

Publisher Notes

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.

From the Hardcover edition.

Media Reviews

"A riveting collection of five tightly plotted stories....Fascinating work from a contemporary master."

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