Shohola Falls
A Novel

Cloth $24.95   |   ISBN 0-8156-0785-7   |   2003

A coming-of-age novel with a twistalong with two interracial love stories, a depiction of the explosive 1960s in America, and a cross-country search for Mark Twain.

Reviews
"Michael Pearson roams back and forth between fact and fantasy, city and country, the troubled 1960s and the days of Mark Twain in this intricate adventure of a youth in confrontation with society and self."
Louis D. Rubin, Jr., author of Edge of the Swamp: A Study in the Literature and Society of the Old South

"Pearson not only creates a compelling picaresque hero in Tommy Blanks but also gives us a flesh-and-blood Mark Twain-not the literary cliché-haunting the pages of [Tommy's] great- great-grandfather's secret journals. Across a century, Twain's hard-won wisdom guides Tommy home to a future bright with the promise of lasting love. A fine and original work."
Philip Gerard, author of Desert Kill and Brilliant Passage

"In reading Michael Pearson's Shohola Falls I am reminded of a quote from Goethe: "Thinking brings forth only thought, but feeling is with living fraught," and, indeed, as in his previous works Imagined Places (1991) and the autobiographical Dreaming of Columbus (1990), Pearson's feeling for place and for the complexities and nuances of human relationships makes his first novel a sparkling excursion into lived experience. Shohola Falls is a felicitous blend of romantic novel, travelogue, rural sociology and perhaps, most importantly, an exercise in historical reconstruction. It is the story of teenage Tommy Blanks' quest for identity and meaning in the face of adversity. After the death of his mother and the abrupt departure of his father, Blanks is on his own in the family's Bronx apartment living on money left by his father and wages from an after-school job. Perhaps as a result of the trauma of abandonment, Banks develops a compulsion to steal which he cultivates into an art form, and when caught shoplifting he is remanded to the Washington Boys' Home in Sullivan County. Here he becomes enamored of a local girl, Nada (who eventually will become his life-long companion). The idyllic state of affairs is temporarily disrupted when Banks becomes involved in a major brawl at the home, subsequently escapes, and is presumed dead after his cap is found floating in the Delaware River. He is given shelter by a Korean War veteran, Andrew Weiry, a former teacher now living as a hermit in a cabin near Shohola Falls. It is through Weiry that Blanks learns something that will change his life forever - his great great grandfather, Thomas Blankenship, was the model for Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Here, fantasy and fiction collide with real life, for there was indeed a Thomas Blankenship. In his Autobiography Twain writes: "....Huckleberry Finn was Tom Blankenship exactly as he was...ignorant, unwashed...the only independent person, boy, or man in the community..." Part history, part conjecture, the "Blankenship Journals" liberally interspersed throughout the narrative, are the glue which holds the novel together, bringing into bold relief the contrasts and convergences between the turbulent 1960s and the simpler times of Mark Twain. Appropriately enough, Pearson concludes Shohola Falls by alluding to the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, for like Huck Finn, his protagonist Tommy Blanks epitomizes Marcel's Homo Viator - the itinerant wanderer or wayfarer, always passing from one situation to another.A concluding word about the author - Michael Pearson has a Ph.D. from Penn State and directs the creative writing program at Old Dominion University. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. In late October he will be at the Spring House in Barryville for a lecture and book signing."
Harold M. Green, River Reporter, Liberty, NY

Description
With the death of his mother and the sudden disappearance of his father, teenager Tommy Blanks is left to live alone in the Bronx on the money his father left him and what he can steal. His shoplifting eventually lands him in Upstate New York in a Catholic Boys' Home run by a demonic priest. There Tommy falls in love with a local girl, Nada, but also meets his nemesis, Adam Delano. After a school-wide brawl, Tommy escapes and is presumed dead by the local authorities when they find his hat floating in the river.

Tommy is taken in by a local hermit, a Korean war veteran, who leads him to Tommy's great-great grandfather's deserted house in a nearby town. History and fiction converge with the discovery that Thomas BlankenshipTommy's great-great grandfatheris the young man whom Mark Twain used as the prototype for Huckleberry Finn. And Tommy's life on the road as an orphan parallels Twain's resourceful Huck Finn. Eventually, his search for the facts and the meaning of his own experience leads Tommy to Chicago, the Southwest, San Francisco, and finally back home to Shohola Falls. Pearson's evocative prose works to dramatic effect in a novel that is part mystery, part bildungsroman, part love story. The book will appeal to a general audience and especially aficionados of Twain.

Author
Michael Pearson is director of the creative writing program at Old Dominion University and has published essays and stories in the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Washington Post, Journal of American Culture, and Creative Nonfiction. His books include Imagined Places: Journeys into Literary America and Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx, both published by Syracuse University Press.

6 x 9, 224 pages