The Return of Jim Lamar
Publisher
:
L. Levi
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782867465505
Number of pages
:
232
Description
***Thyde Monnier Prize 2010***
In this coming-of-age novel, a teenage boy and a Vietnam War vet, both alienated from their homes and lives, help each other to understand the good and the bad of their overlapping worlds.
After he served in the war in Vietnam, Jim Lamar needed thirteen years without contact with his family or friends before he could return to the small town in Missouri where he was born. By the time he arrives, his parents have died without knowing where he was, and the family farm has been ransacked and deserted. The townspeople, no longer recognizing in Jim the boy they once knew, are hostile toward him. Everyone, that is, except Billy Brentwood, the book’s narrator.
Billy is thirteen. Until Jim returned, the sum of Billy’s universe had consisted of a family spare in showing their emotions, a school he didn’t like much, and fishing from the banks of the Mississippi. He finds that Jim shares his passion for fishing, and the two become first fishing buddies and then friends.
Over the course of the novel, the war vet confides to the boy stories of death and destruction, but increasingly of brotherhood. He recounts how, after returning to the United States, he crisscrossed the country to fulfill promises he’d made to three of his army buddies who did not make it back to visit their families when the war was over. The journey had turned him into a different man.
Their friendship will shape Billy’s future, as he will become a successful writer who never forgot the man who changed his fate.
Author
Lionel Salaün : Lionel Salaün lives in Chambéry, where he was born in 1959. In order to devote his time to writing, he worked a string of odd jobs.
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