At the outset of this novel spanning four decades, Loyal Blood accidentally kills his girlfriend. The story alternately follows the fortunes of Loyal who, fearing punishment, sets out across America, and the family he leaves behind on their hardscrabble Vermont farm. As Loyal drifts from misfortune to misfortune, variously trying his hand at machining, mining, prospecting for uranium, digging for dinosaur bones, trapping, and farming, he is incapable of forming permanent attachments to people or places. With an uncanny ear for dialog, Proulx takes the Blood family through the changes that pass for progress during the next 40 years. Tersely worded postcards punctuate the heartbreaking stories that form this moving first novel.-- Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, Ontario (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Postcards are the only communication between Loyal Blood and the poor, hardworking farm family he leaves behind in Vermont. The secret Loyal carries with him--the accidental killing of his girlfriend, Billy--is revealed in the first pages, and, thereafter, as he prospects for uranium, traps coyotes, or digs for dinosaur bones, his messages continue to arrive home from across the U.S., long after his father has died and his brother, sister, and mother have moved away. The story observes each family member through much adversity and some small successes. Proulx's first novel may be compared with the work of Steinbeck and Dreiser as a vivid, heartfelt portrayal presenting the struggles and strife of the poorly educated underclass in post-World War II America. ~--Alice Joyce

Proulx staked her claim on the rocky soil of New England gothic in a collection called Heart Songs and Other Stories (1988), and puts down roots there in this dark debut novel that chronicles the slow diaspora and death of a Vermont farm family. They are the Bloods--cranky Minkton; washed-out Jewel; and the not-so-sweet fruit of their loins, Dub, who lost an arm riding the rails; handsome Loyal; and Mermelle, an object of ridicule among the children of Cream Hill because she wears her mother's dresses to school. That's because the Bloods are as poor as the Beans of Egypt, Maine. During WW II, things get even worse when Loyal jumps into his '36 Chevy Coach and heads west in order to avoid being blamed for the accidental death of his girlfriend. For the next 40 or so years, he sends postcards home that tell the tale of his exploits, including getting scalped by an Indian, surviving a mine cave-in Colorado, digging for dinosaur bones in Utah, and ending up a toothless old codger with a lot of stories no one believes. Meanwhile, back at the farm Minkton and Dub set the barn on fire for the insurance money and wind up in prison, an experience that causes father to hang himself and son to relocate to Florida. Mermelle finds happiness as a mail-order bride, and Jewel sells the farm to a trailer-park developer. Loyal's words could serve as an epitaph for the whole Blood tribe: ``Life cripples us in different ways but it gets to everybody...Gets you again and again and one day it wins.'' Not exactly invigorating, but shrewdly, imagistically written. Promising work, providing that Proulx discovers a few colors on the other side of the spectrum in novel number two.

In this poignant first novel by Proulx ( Heart Songs and Other Stories ), artfully misspelled postcards form the tenuous links between ill-fated young trapper Loyal Blood and his family--Mink and Jewelle, Dub and Mernelle--who eke a meager existence from their ancestral Vermont farm. When Loyal accidentally kills his saucy redheaded sweetheart Billy while making love in the fields, he hides her body in a stone-covered fox den. Abruptly he tells his family that he and Billy are heading west to ``make a new start.'' In a vengeful rage his father Mink shoots Loyal's cows. Loyal endures harsh years of self-imposed exile as, from 1944 to the '80s, he roves from job to job--mining, fossil picking, trapping--each authoritatively detailed. Racked with gagging seizures whenever he tries to touch another woman, sick in his lungs, Loyal doggedly accepts his lot without complaint. Back home the violent, feckless Bloods fall into ruin, attempting arson, serving jail terms and losing the farm, which is sold for trailer parks. Flurries of postcards fly, both personal and commercial: brother Dub answers one for an artificial limb, desperate sister Mernelle responds to a lonely lumberman's ad for a wife. Proulx writes a rich, sensuous prose; she captures the earthy, hard-bitten voices of men and women resigned to travail and documents the passing of an epoch. If there is a fault, it is the overabundance of minor characters randomly introduced into the narrative. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved