Music of the Swamp - by Lewis Nordan (Paperback)

About the Book

Nordan focuses his magic and imagination on a single theme--a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father. "Lyrically conjures up a Southern-fried childhood that's as dark, hilarious, and affecting as any you're likely to encounter".--Cleveland Plain Dealer. 1992 ALA Notable Book.

Book Synopsis

"This is not merely a stellar book. It is absolute ballad put to page." -Southern Living

Lewis Nordan's fiction invents its own world--always populated by madly heroic misfits. In Music of the Swamp, he focuses his magic and imagination on a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father--a man who attracts bad luck like a magnet. Nordan evokes ten-year-old Sugar Mecklin's world with dazzling clarity: the smells, the tastes, and most surely the sounds of life in this peculiar, somewhat bizarre, Delta town. Sugar discovers that what his daddy says is true: "The Delta is filled up with death"; but he also finds an endless supply of hope.

An ALA Notable Book
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award

From the Back Cover

"This is not merely a stellar book. It is absolute ballad put to page."*

Lewis Nordan's fiction invents its own world--always populated by madly heroic misfits. In Music of the Swamp, he focuses his magic and imagination on a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father--a man who attracts bad luck like a magnet. Nordan evokes ten-year-old Sugar Mecklin's world with dazzling clarity: the smells, the tastes, and most surely the sounds of life in this peculiar, somewhat bizarre, Delta town. Sugar discovers that what his daddy says is true: "The Delta is filled up with death"; but he also finds an endless supply of hope.

An ALA Notable Book
A Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award

"Conjures up a Southern-fried childhood that's as dark, hilarious and affecting as any you're likely to encounter." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Nordan provoke[s] a cringe of pain right after the belly laugh. His books . . . are very funny and deep-down sad, stirring up great heaps of emotion." --New York Newsday

"A bittersweet melody syncopated with sadness relieved by moments of all-too-human comedy . . . 'There is great pain in all love, ' Sugar eventually concludes, 'but we don't care, it's worth it.' Mr. Nordan's enchanting Music of the Swamp bears poignant witness to that truth." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Nordan introduces a group of characters as wild and woolly, as unpredictable, outrageous and violence-prone as the land that spawns them." --Chicago Tribune

"Like a hypnotic Bessie Smith ballad, Nordan's book bids you listen." --*Southern Living

Review Quotes

"Lordy, Lordy, can Lewis Nordan write! Horrible things happen, and horribly funny things, too, in the Delta town of Arrow Catcher, Miss." --Los Angeles Times

"A bittersweet melody syncopated with sadness relieved by moments of all-too-human comedy . . . 'There is great pain in all love, ' Sugar eventually concludes, 'but we don't care, it's worth it.' Mr. Nordan's enchanting Music of the Swamp bears poignant witness to that truth." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Conjures up a Southern-fried childhood that's as dark, hilarious, and affecting as any you're likely to encounter." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Lewis Nordan is one of those Southern writers who provoke a cringe of pain right after the belly laugh. [His books] are very funny and deep-down sad, stirring up great heaps of emotion." --New York Newsday

"Nordan introduces a group of characters as wild and woolly, as unpredictable, outrageous and violence-prone as the land that spawns them." --Chicago Tribune

"This is not merely a stellar book. It is absolute ballad put to page, a stunning composition about the awakening of young Sugar Mecklin to a mystical world of fantasy, illusion, and harsh reality . . . Like a hypnotic Bessie Smith ballad, Nordan's book bids you listen." --Southern Living