New novel ‘The Fugitives’ is ‘Thoughtful, Full of Action’
Brooklyn BookBeat: Author to Read in Cobble Hill
In “The Fugitives” (Feb. 9, Simon & Schuster), National Book Award finalist Christopher Sorrentino (“Trance,” 2005) pulls off a clever literary feat. He packages a powerful meditation on race and identity, love and obsession, and compulsion and free will into a novel that moves like a good old-fashioned caper. The result is wholly engaging, a book that is “thoughtful but full of action — and a pleasing entertainment, too” (Kirkus Reviews).
The author will appear at BookCourt in Cobble Hill on Feb. 9 (7 p.m., 163 Court St.), to read from and discuss his book.
The premise is simple: A man takes leave of his big-city life after personal disaster and seeks refuge in a remote Midwestern town. He reinvents himself there to escape his past and tarnished professional reputation, but it turns out he can only take his charade so far before others — who also are not fully what they seem — force him to confront his true self.
Complications emerge as Sandy Mulligan, the disgraced writer, pursues a relationship with Kat Danhoff, a Chicago reporter with secrets of her own. They first encounter each other in a most unusual way: while listening to the native Ojibway storyteller John Salteau at a local library. Danhoff believes Salteau relates to her investigation of a supposed casino theft. Mulligan knows nothing of this, or of Danhoff’s life in Chicago, when he befriends her and begins telling a colorful version of his own story.