Shohola Falls

By Michael Pearson

Book Overview

With the death of his mother and the sudden disappearance of his father, teenager Tommy Blanks is faced with living alone in the Bronx on the money his father left him and on whatever he can steal. His shoplifting eventually lands him in a Catholic Boys' Home in Upstate New York run by a demonic priest. After a school-wide brawl, Tommy escapes and is presumed dead by the local authorities when they find his hat floating in the river. Tommy is taken in by a local hermit who leads him to Tommy's great-grandfather's deserted house in a nearby town. History and fiction converge as we discover that Thomas Blankenship, Tommy's great-great-grandfather, is the young man whom Mark Twain used as a prototype for Huckleberry Finn. And Tommy's life on the road as an orphan parallels Twain's resourceful Huck Finn. Eventually, his search for the facts and the meaning of his own experience leads Tommy across the country and finally back home. Michael Pearson's evocative prose works to dramatic effect in a novel that is part mystery, part bildungs-roman, part love story.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815607857
• ISBN13: 9780815607854
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An Imaginative look at Twain, history and the present

I love mark twain's work and Shohola Falls inventively played with the master's fictions -- and was fascinating in its own right. The main character, Tommy Blanks, is a moder-day version of Huck Finn, a little sadder and a little wiser, perhaps. I love the way Pearson weaves history and fiction together seamlessly. It's a fine book.

a discovery

I just saw the movie cold mountain and loved it. Then I happened to stumble on the novel Shohola Falls by Michael Pearson, and I felt that I had found a novel that had a similar mystery and sense of the quest to it as that film had. Like cold mountain, Shohola Falls is a love story, a story about two people coming toward one another froma great distance. The movie has gotten a lot of attention (as did Frazier's book), but I recommend Shohola Falls as a hidden gem.

more than a coming of age novel

Shohola Falls is much more than a coming of age novel. It is a story filled with drama and history. It follows a track into the heart of race and desire in America, but it does it through the fascinating characters it creates -- historical and imagined. Well worth reading!

Moving story of history and self discovery

In 'Shohola Falls', Michael Pearson has written a powerful and moving narrative of a lost soul finding meaning in history, literature, and ultimately love. Moving easily from history to fiction, Pearson tells the story of Tommy Blanks, a kid growing up in the 1960's who loses both of his parents under very different circumstances. His adventures mirror those of his ancestor who was a childhood friend of Mark Twain and the model for Huckleberry Finn, whose journal Tommy discovers in a pivotal moment in the novel. The author manages to avoid all the gimmicky pitfalls such a double-narrative could fall into, as he tells the heartbreaking stories of the two Blank(enship)s across the centuries in a sharp, sparse style. I found the writing utterly engrossing from the start, as the fate and emotions of the central characters were described in convincing and engaging manners. The bittersweet endings of both the historical and the contemporary tales stayed with me long after I put the book down, as the convergence of the two was achieved with rare skill by Pearson which made the ending seem both natural and revelatory. Highest recommendations for this wonderful novel, especially for those with a penchant for creative use of history for fictional purposes.

a terrific historical novel

I loved Shohola Falls. It's a historical novel and more besides. The two stories -- one set in the sixties and the other set in the 19th century -- tie together beautifully. It's a love story -- actually two -- but it's also a story about what the real life Huck Finn might have been like and what his creator was all about. An inventive book!