SLOW DANCING ON DINOSAUR BONES: A Novel

By Lana Witt and Witt

Book Overview

Bringing to life a cast of eccentric, unforgettable characters, Lana Witt weaves a tale of epic dimension in a small rural town definitely worth a visit. When wayward Californian Tom Jetts rolls his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684815354
• ISBN13: 9780684815350
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A good read

A friend recommended this book to me and I could not put it down! I loved the characters and the in-depth description of the town. I can't wait to read more from this author. A very enjoyable story.

Lana Witt's storyteller's voice and lyricism is unmistakable

One of the more worrisome notions in frenzied America these days is that we have lost the self-sufficiency of the small towns and rural byways of our collective past. Don't tell that to Lana Witt. Her debut novel is an enchanting, often outrageously funny portrait of the old home place as it is now, still miles from the Interstate, still proud of its flashing yellow light. Witt's town is Pick, Kentucky, in the Appalachian hills, population 900, which she has fertilized with an array of uncommonly group-reliant characters, each one as skillfully shaped as the next. The novel opens with the arrival of a disillusioned Tom Jett, a philosophy graduate from Stanford, who is seeking enlightenment. Tom meets Gilman Lee, an impetuous fifty-five-year-old jack-of-all-trades, whose stormy behaviors, especially with women and authority, are legendary. He also meets Gilman's buddy, Ten-Fifteen, so named for his anatomically skewed arms, and Gemma Collet, an unhappy woman with vitiligo, a skin disease that causes her to splotch with hoary white patches. To relieve her misery, Gemma often sits naked in the creek, trying to wash off what has already washed out the pigmentation of her skin. Add to this crew Rosalee Wilson, a one-time resident who left Pick for Florida and the love of a rich man, Frank Denton, who abused her and is pursuing her back to Pick so that he can kill her. The Pick characters protect themselves from what Witt calls the "bad strange" by nourishing the "good strange" in one another, that is, by playing music together, partying religiously on Saturday nights, or ducking work to go fishing whenever the mood descends. Besides Frank, the other "bad strange" is the Conroy Coal Company, which, also as the novel opens, is selling leases to cash-starved locals. Some residents hope that once the drilling tests are done, the locals will strike it rich with coal deposits and Pick will acquire its first McDonald's. Couple this impending sell-out of the bituminous r! emains underground with Rosalee's fate, and the plot is set. The pulse of the story beats in Gilman Lee, a middle-aged mix of Nick Adams and Huck Finn. Gilman has never settled down, never married, and is (somehow) the man those women longing for security admire most. He acts wholly by instinct, whether digging up his friend Zack and placing the skeleton in a special shed where the two can "talk" or plotting to destroy the coal company's inroads into Pick's peaceable kingdom. Most city people define themselves in the light of their professions. Not Pick folk, and certainly not Gilman. He lives in voluntary poverty, believing that what he does is far less important than who he is. As the story develops, Tom and Gemma absorb Gilman's naturalness, emulate his impulses with good and ill consequences. Witt emphasizes Gilman's humor and native intelligence in contrast to the demeaning commerciality of corporate coal. In Gilman's contrariness, she suggests that what we've made

Best in a long time

Sorry, but I found this on a discount table and decided to give it a try. This reminded so much of the small town in which I grew up, characters around each corner (the two corners). I read oodles on long business trips and this was the most pleasant surprise for me in 1997. It is probably not up to everyone's taste, but the producers of 'Never Give an Inch' (Sometimes a Great Notion) should take a look into this.

Finally! It's been so long since I couldn't stop reading

SLOW DANCING took me to a secret place--a place few have been to, and even fewer come away from. Finally! A book that kept me on the edge of my seat, up all night, and made me late for work the next day! The Characters in this novel are hilarious and needy, pathetic and spiteful, and you can't help but fall in love with, well, ALMOST all of them. Lana Witt has certainly captured the free spirit in all of us with this, her first novel. I can't wait to read more of her books!!