David Treuer - Prudence (v5.0).epub

A haunting and unforgettable novel about love, loss, race, and desire in World War II–era America.

On a sweltering day in August 1942, Frankie Washburn returns to his family’s rustic Minnesota resort for one last visit before he joins the war as a bombardier, headed for the darkened skies over Europe. Awaiting him at the Pines are those he’s about to leave behind: his hovering mother; the distant father to whom he’s been a disappointment; the Indian caretaker who’s been more of a father to him than his own; and Billy, the childhood friend who over the years has become something much more intimate. But before the homecoming can be celebrated, the search for a German soldier, escaped from the POW camp across the river, explodes in a shocking act of violence, with consequences that will reverberate years into the future for all of them and that will shape how each of them makes sense of their lives.

With Prudence, Treuer delivers his most ambitious and captivating novel yet. Powerful and wholly original, it’s a story of desire and loss and the search for connection in a riven world; of race and class in a supposedly more innocent era. Most profoundly, it’s about the secrets we choose to keep, the ones we can’t help but tell, and who—and how—we’re allowed to love.


PRAISE
“What does it say about our troubled times — and David Treuer’s considerable talents — that his World War II-era novel speaks to the present moment in American history with more eloquence and complexity than the nightly newscast? Inequalities of race, class, gender and sexual orientation; the treatment of captured combatants; the Escheresque ethics of bombing civilians a world away; the culture that allows white people to shoot people of color with impunity; all this, and much more besides, resonates through Treuer’s tender and devastating book…[A] master class on suspense, shifting perspective and conflicting desire.”
—Anthony Marra, The Washington Post

“[Prudence is]…at once both blunt and hushed in tone, wielding a sledgehammer while walking on tiptoes….each new page breeds both familiarity and — partly because of that familiarity — the capacity to surprise… By taking us one step backward for every two steps forward, Treuer doesn’t just unravel the plot we might expect; he prompts us to interrogate the assumptions — racial, sexual and otherwise — that build up those expectations in the first place.”
—NPR

“The poetics of damage permeates David Treuer’s elegantly bitter fourth novel, Prudence, which unites a distinctly modern sociopolitical perspective with a more old-fashioned moral rigor about the consequences of emotional cowardice, complicity, and repression… Treuer is particularly skilled in showing how a substantial lie in one area of a life can manifest as a distortion in another, apparently unrelated area…Without judgment, but also without blinking, he expertly vivisects characters who can’t own up to the truth about themselves, showing how the unaddressed damage only deepens over time…Prudence hurts, and that hurt lingers. Very few novels take that much of a risk.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“David Treuer is a literary shape-shifter…true to form, his latest book, Prudence, is unlike all its predecessors: a tightly plotted hybrid fiction that combines elements of a mystery, a literary romance and a Greek tragedy.”
—Chicago Tribune

“Treuer does a masterful job exploring the multiple stories that culminate in the death of a young woman in small-town Minnesota…[and] proves remarkably adept at capturing the thoughts and the voices of all the people affected… [Frankie’s] relationship with Billy is one of the most affecting in recent fiction…Treuer realizes that the things people tend to hold dear — history, heritage, themselves and one another — are more complex and intricate than we sometimes realize. It’s the intersections of all these things that inspire the stories behind the story in Prudence and make it one of the most honest, moving novels about America in quite a while.”
—Los Angeles Times

“David Treuer beautifully captures a place and an era. . . . Treuer imbues mundane moments with reverence… And he masterfully weaves into the narrative minor characters who have major resonance.”
—Seattle Times

“Compelling…[and] arresting…Treuer writes as an insider…his Ojibwe characters are multifaceted individuals, not mere decorate ciphers. They are, moreover, engaged like everyone else in their country’s broader history…Although Prudence is suffused with tragedy, Treuer skilfully sustains a sense of pace and tension. In doing so, he brings to life a little-examined corner of America, and shows how it, too, was touched by war.”
—Financial Times

“Treuer writes beautifully about the dark corners of human nature, and the brief reprieves that come in even the most unhappy lives. He can’t (or won’t) give these unlucky souls many second chances, but he does make them come alive on the page.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“The relationships in [Prudence] are deep and complex…The language is etched with poetry, the emotions deeply felt…In a tidy space [Treuer] shows us life in the gorgeous Pines landscape, a community of Indians and how they survive, the fate of a crippled Indian woman, the trials of a German man and a Jewish man, the soldiering of World War II, and the strange tricks and secrets of the heart.”
—Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“In Prudence, natural-born storyteller David Treuer spins a vivid, sorrowful tale… [A] master craftsman of evocative scenes…Prudence is evidence that Treuer’s literary powers continue to grow. He knows people and goes to places foreign to most American writers, and his stories deeply honor “the unremembered,” to whom he dedicates this book.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

[In] Prudence, the characters… transcend history…Treuer’s novel captures in [a] careful, lustrous narrative, a time in which passion was restrained in public yet extravagantly expressed in writing. He not only sets his book in the early 20th century, he channels authors of that era— the writers he sees as his stylistic cousins.”
—MinnPost

“Prudence is an intricate ensemble piece; exploring themes of loss, desire, race, war, and the secrets we keep, through the point of view of five beautifully realized characters…In clear, uncluttered prose, Treuer guides us through 10 years [and] multiple voices…gorgeous.”
—Portland Oregonian

“Magnetizing and richly original…[with] extraordinarily affecting characters … Treuer’s trenchant and compassionate novel glimmers with nature’s potent beauty, fresh historical detail, and scrupulous insight.”
—Booklist (starred review)