Elegy for Sam Emerson

Hilary Masters, a writer's writer, has shaped a vivid novel. At a critical point in his life, Sam Emerson takes stock of where he has been and what his life has meant. The result is a saga that spans continents and decades. Like all of us, the past inhabits Sam's life despite the decades that slipped by. Through a series of flashbacks, Sam relives his unusual childhood filled not with stock characters but deeply imagined people who have histories and souls. "Elegy for Sam Emerson" is compassionate, sharp, and rich with vivid detail. Masters writes perceptively about such diverse subjects as gardening, food, France, Pittsburg, the theatre, race and love. Here he describes a common stone, "All of the past, Emerson thinks, can be kept in a stone. Just an ordinary flat smooth piece of granite you might pick up by a stream and hold to feel its texture, its silent pulse and perfect weight, before you toss it into the water. There goes the Ice Age, and the dinosaurs, Caesar's legions, Lewis and Clark, and Frank Sinatra - the whole catalog of the planet going ker-plunk at midstream. But if you held the stone a little longer, all the sounds and flavors of the past fit themselves into your hand." I enthusiastically recommend this novel. If only there were more books like it.

Elegy for Sam Emerson is a beautifully written work. Not only is the story line captivating, but it is one of those novels that the language and syntax alone make it worth reading. Hilary Masters is indeed a master of the written word.