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Robert Gatewood was born in 1974. He spends time in Colorado, New Mexico, and western New York. The Sound of the Trees is his first novel.
Robert Gatewood lives in New Mexico. The Sound of the Trees was a Book Sense 76 pick and is his first novel.
The Sound of the Trees: A Novel
eBook
(First Edition)
$7.99
-
ISBN-13:
9781466865969
- Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
- Publication date: 03/11/2014
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 304
- Sales rank: 251,680
- File size: 375 KB
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An extraordinary debut that brings together a hypnotic quest, a thrilling Western, and an unforgettable love story.
Set in the 1930s, The Sound of the Trees tells the story of Trude Mason, who, seeking to escape a brutal father and a violent past, sets out with his mother on horseback on a grueling journey through the extreme desert and mountainous terrain of southwestern New Mexico. Their destination is Colorado, a place Trude imagines to be abundantly fertile, wild, and free. But along the way, Trude finds himself in the clutches of a small New Mexican border town, once again a victim of brutality and lawlessness, this time in the form of a pitiless sheriff and his posse. When they arrest and sentence to death a young woman whose life Trude has saved, he must face an explosive collision between conscience and self-preservation.
Affecting yet unsentimental, written in piercing, unadorned prose, Robert Gatewood's The Sound of the Trees marks the arrival of a vital new literary voice.
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Publishers Weekly
Taking its title from a Robert Frost poem, this engrossing, lyrical novel marks
the debut of a writer of great promise. Set during the Depression, the narrative
follows 18-year-old Trude Mason as he takes his mother and flees on horseback
from his abusive alcoholic father, leaving behind their foreclosed New Mexican
ranch for the high country of Colorado. After mourning his mother's death from a
rattlesnake bite and braving incredible hardships—not the least of which is the
approaching winter—Trude is bushwhacked and stabbed by an Englishman traveling
with a beautiful black girl who is his captive. Eventually, Trude makes his way
to a fledgling frontier town where a sinister mayor holds sway. The ambitious
mayor dreams of parlaying the coming of the railroad into the creation of a
dominant center of commerce on the western frontier, elevating himself to
political prominence. Trude discovers that the girl, Delilah, is also in town
and has been jailed for the theft of a rake. His thwarted attempts to free her
evolve into a classic David and Goliath struggle. When an Eastern magazine
writer comes to town, the power-crazed mayor decides to hang Delilah, sending a
message to the world that the town is ruled by law—and by him. The boy's
desperate and heroic struggle against time and insurmountable odds invests the
denouement with gut-wrenching tension. At times repetitive and marred by off-key
imagery—Delilah's hair "fell past her shoulders like nests of stone"; the
mayor's boots "sprang from the floor like hand-rubbed coals"—this is
nevertheless an uncommonly good first novel, strongly evocative of Cormac
McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.School Library Journal
Adult/High School-This novel of the West dramatically engages readers' senses from its opening lines and, by maintaining tension and momentum, begs to be read without pause. The Robert Frost poem from which the title is taken empathetically foreshadows a young man's longing to "set forth for somewhere," perhaps risking the "reckless choice" in his destiny-defining quest. The journey begins on horseback in Depression-era New Mexico with Trude Mason, a taciturn 18-year-old, and his mother fleeing their impoverished family ranch in predawn desperation to escape the escalating brutality of the young man's father. En route to Colorado, Trude's steadfastness of purpose is tested by personal tragedy and sharpened by the treachery of man. His fate becomes entwined with that of a girl whom fortune has placed in the hands of scoundrels, and whose rescue he champions out of nascent love and a strong code of honor. The Western genre affords a plentiful selection of character types (some memorable, others sketched in less detail than Trude's horse), and a scale of monumental proportions upon which to stage them. Gatewood has created a richly textured tableau threaded with mysticism and sustained by pitch-perfect dialogue laced with quiet dignity. A promising first novel that fans of Cormac McCarthy's work will welcome.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
A first novel set in 1930s New Mexico finds an extraordinarily resourceful, but emotionally wounded, 18-year-old on a violent search for moral truth. Fed-up with his drunk, dangerously abusive father, Trude Mason puts his mother on a horse, loads up a mule with provisions, saddles up his trusty mare Triften, and heads for Colorado, where he hopes to find ranch work and make a new start. Though he stares down his knife-wielding father, Trude encounters disaster in the mountains that leaves his mother dead. Later, he witnesses and fails to avenge the murder of a young black girl's child by a gloating, well-dressed Englishman. Left in the mountains for dead, Trude wanders into a nameless town whose peculiar, pathetic Cormac McCarthy-esque denizens are betting that the arrival of a railroad spur will bring them wealth and civilization. Though he finds a friend in the wistful rancher Charlie Ford, Trude sees right through the pretentiousness of most of the townsfolk, finding little to like in the drunken hedonism of a young Italian immigrant John Frank, the gloating bigotry of the Ralston brothers, and the bloviating mayor, who lectures Trude about showing respect for authority. Trude challenges that authority when he discovers that the black girl has been imprisoned unjustly and might even be executed. Trude has to take justice into his own hands, and, in this postmodern updating of the formula western, heroic action leads to nothing but loss and sorrow. Only after returning to the mountains can Trude come to terms with the grief that plagues his heart. Subtly drawn scenes of naturalistic beauty and sudden brutality redeem Gatewood's distracting tendency to write dialogue, some trite (anaging mentor remarks, "pain ain't nothin' more than the memory of comfort"), without quotation marks.