Vandal Love Paperback - 2012

From the rear cover

"Béchard has reinvented the generational novel with innovative brilliance. The book has all the quirky depth of a great HBO series and a line-to-line literary energy that is very rare. This is an enormously impressive debut by a clearly gifted writer." --Robert Olen Butler "Reminiscent of Proulx and Doctorow in both sweep and grace of prose, it is hard to believe that Vandal Love, so elegant and accomplished, is only Béchard's first novel." --Dagoberto Gilb "The word 'masterpiece' is not to be used lightly, but one is tempted in the case of Vandal Love, for the scope of its ambition, its originality, and its muscular use of language conjure a young Faulkner, García Márquez, or Steinbeck." --Katherine Min A family curse--a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship--causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. Book One follows the giants' line, exploring Jude Hervé's career as a boxer in Georgia and Louisiana in the 1960s, his escape from that brutal life with his baby daughter Isa, and her eventual decision to enter into a strange, chaste marriage with a much older man. Book Two traces a different line of life entirely, as the runts of the family discover that their power lies in a kind of unifying love. François seeks the identity of his missing father for years, while his own son flees from modern society into spiritual quests. In assured and mystically powerful prose, Deni Y. Béchard tells a wide-ranging, spellbinding story of a family trying to create an identity in an unwelcoming landscape. Vandal Love is a breathtaking literary debut about the power of love to create and destroy. Deni Y. Béchard was born in British Columbia to French Canadian and American parents, and grew up in both Canada and the United States. His articles, stories, and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers. He has also published a memoir, Cures for Hunger.

Media reviews

Citations

• Booklist, 05/15/2012, Page 19
• Kirkus Reviews, 04/15/2012, Page 0
• Publishers Weekly, 03/19/2012, Page 63