Since of course he’d written the letter in English, he hadn’t known what would come of it, but two weeks after he’d sent the manuscript off, there’d been a phone call from a man, an editor, in Bilbao. His English wasn’t very good but Henry listened to everything he said and then made him say it all again to make sure he understood.
Joaquim Xabier Otxoa had no brother by the name of Tomas. He had no brother at all, nor a sister. No one. The manuscript was a new work, not a work already known in euskera. A new work. A novel. Imagine. This man Henry had met was Joaquim Xabier. There could be no doubt. Still hiding, disguised now as a brother. A new work after so many years. A miracle, undoubted. Thank you. Thank you. Imagine.
Henry marveled at Tomas, at his performance. He asked if any of these novels had been translated into English, and the man told him no, though he hoped one day they would be. Our greatest writer, you know, he’d said, which was exactly what Tomas had told him, though Henry had not known then, of course, that Tomas was speaking about himself.
Two days later the man called back. “Yes, yes, Mr. Garrett, now it is very certain. I have read all to the end. You are there, in the story. You are there. Henry Garrett. Your name. You are there and the storm with you.”
Henry tried to imagine it, tried to picture Tomas writing the final pages in the midst of the terrible storm. Where had he been? How frightened? How had he managed to continue writing, to find his way toward the end? Where, now, had he gone?
One day, Henry believed, his questions would be answered. Perhaps Tomas would do precisely what Henry had done, step by chance through the front door of the Ganesha Motel to find himself treated as Henry had been treated: with compassion and care, his squandered life restored to him, his every sin forgiven.
Meanwhile, Henry knew exactly what he would do. He would try to learn this strange and ancient language. He would try to memorize its syntax, its rules, its idioms. Gathered around him, scattered throughout Mohit’s study, were dictionaries and histories, atlases and maps—everything he could find on the Basque Country, Euskal Herria, and its seven provinces straddling Spain and France. It might take years and years, he knew, but the clatter in his head had grown quiet, the faint murmurings of a distant city, and he was in no hurry now. There was nothing he felt himself rushing toward.
No matter how long it might take, he would make his way through the manuscript. He would work precisely as Latangi had worked on Mohit’s great poem, translating word by word into English, carried forward by gratitude, attempting to decipher and then convey all the sorrow and longing the story possessed and its every moment, no matter how fragile or fleeting, of grace.
Unusual stories. Unexpected voices. An immersive sense of place. Lee Boudreaux Books publishes both award-winning authors and writers making their literary debut. A carefully curated mix, these books share an under-lying DNA: a mastery of language, commanding narrative momentum, and a knack for leaving us astonished, delighted, disturbed, and powerfully af- fected, sometimes all at once
Lee Boudreaux on A Thousand Miles from Nowhere:
Set in Virginia, the state where I grew up, and New Orleans, a city I invent reasons to visit as often as anyone will let me, A Thousand Miles from Nowhere is tender and touching and sometimes uproariously funny. I think of it as an “Amazing Grace” story, the tale of a man who once was lost (or, more accurately, who deliberately lost everything he should have been holding dear) but then is found, in the most unexpected of places and alongside a cast of wonderfully bighearted small-town eccentrics. But for all of its deft humor, this is also a deceptively powerful story. The rich cadence of John Gregory Brown’s language has the mesmerizing quality of a prayer, and his psychologically piercing portrait of a man trying to resist succumbing to the madness that took his father’s life is as soul stirring and life affirming as anything I’ve read.
About Lee Boudreaux
Over the course of her career, Lee Boudreaux has published a diverse list of titles, including Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Smith Henderson’s Fourth of July Creek, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Ron Rash’s Serena, Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, and David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, among many others.
For more information about forthcoming books, please go to leeboudreauxbooks.com.
About the Author
Born and raised in New Orleans, John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur; and Audubon’s Watch. His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award. For two decades he has taught and directed the creative writing program at Sweet Briar College, in Virginia, where he serves as the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English. He and his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown, have three children.
Also by John Gregory Brown
Audubon’s Watch
The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.
Sign Up
Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
I One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
II Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Lee Boudreaux Books
About the Author
Also by John Gregory Brown
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by John Gregory Brown
Cover design and painting by Lauren Harms
Author photograph by Paige Critcher
Cover © 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
leeboudreauxbooks.com
First ebook edition: June 2016
Gregory Orr, excerpt from “The Ghosts Listen to Orpheus Sing” from Orpheus & Eurydice: A Lyric Sequence. Copyright © 2001 by Gregory Orr. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Lee Boudreaux Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Lee Boudreaux name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
ISBN 978-0-316-30282-1
E-20160511-DA-NF
es from Nowhere
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere Page 26
