The Lies Boys Tell: A Novel.

New York, NY W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. Hardcover First Ed; First Impression. First Ed; First Impression. Near Fine in Fine DJ: Book shows only minute indications of use; faint smudge at bottom edge of page block; binding square and secure; text clean. DJ unclipped; mylar-protected. Virtually 'As New'. NOT a Remainder. NOT a Book-Club Edition. NOT an Ex-Library copy. 8vo. 267pp. Winner of the 1990 Associated Writing Programs Award. Hardback with DJ. The Lies Boys Tell relates the story of Ed Reece, a dying man who convinces his middle-aged son to take him on a journey through Middle America, to end in the town where he was born. His family--his wife and children, and their spouses and children--are the primary characters in this tale, peppered with Ed's philosophical musings about life and death. Herrin's view of small-town America is pitch-perfect and insightful, populated with the denisens of fast-food joints and strip malls and by people burdened with the stifling bleakness of their lives. Dying of lung cancer, Ed Reece asks his son Larry, a 1960s antiwar radical living in Mexico, to buy a van, drive Ed to his sister's house in Savannah to pick up the bed in which he was born, and then drive him to Chumleyville, Alabama so that he can die in the house in which he was born. Ed's wife, other son, and daughter are told nothing of the trip. But Ed directs Larry west and, before Larry realizes it, they near the home Larry's ex-wife Connie shares with their two children and her lesbian lover. Larry, Connie, their son Jeff, and Ed drive to Savannah and Chumleyville where, before Ed dies, the house's occupants vacate it in exchange for the rest of Ed's cash. A changing narrative perspective provides strong characters in this well-crafted, deeply moving tale of life's choices and intended legacies.