Stonecypher Road

By Nancy Longwell and Warren Longwell

Ida Jo Canfield, having come from childhood poverty, has now returned to her old hometown to care for a dying mother. When her husband, Morris returns from a week of speed racing on the Bonneville... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931468230
• ISBN13: 9781931468237
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Invisible College Press
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Takes cross-genre to a whole new level

To say that Stonecypher Road crosses genres is an understatement. First of all, it's literate. But then again, it's also a pulp novel, and pulp adventure thrillers don't usually read like literary fiction. The subject matter is even more of a paradox. Crystal skulls and The Holy Grail and "mole people" are preposterous to the point of being tacky, and yet in the hands of these two authors, these cliches seem totally believable. Maybe even mundane. With this book, it's hard to know what's real and what's fiction. That sense of reality stems partly from the rich dialog. It's exceedingly conversational. Again, this is something not normally found in a pulp novel. It is perhaps because of this believability growing throughout the pages that the ending achieves its shock value. And shocking it is! I defy any reader to say they see it coming. This book is either a brilliantly-plotted novel, or a confusing enigma. I've read it twice, and I'm still perplexed by it. Whatever it is, it's certainly unique.

Dual story lines work well

Stonecypher Road- the debut novel from co-authors, Warren and Nancy Longwell-has a tone and style that's remarkably literate for a potboiler. But, then, this isn't an average potboiler. If you wonder, as I did, how a married couple would go about the process of co-authoring a book, the answer becomes evident as two stories are combined seamlessly in this work. The death of a mother and the confrontation of childhood poverty (Nancy's story) blends with the cat-and-mouse intrigue of an ingeniously-hidden code and an ancient prophecy (Warren's story) into a believable tale with an ending that is truly stunning. I can enthusiastically recommend this book for its multiple-story-line plot.

Both the prose and the plot are smart

The one word that best describes Stonecypher Road is intelligent. The prose is as good as the plot, and both are superb. If these two budding authors have any more stories up their sleeves like this, I predict a bright future for them in writing. Unfortunately, this praise doesn't extend to their publisher, ICP. The book is riddled with typos, and frankly, this writing deserved better treatment. Nevertheless, the novel is well worth the effort of wading through the publication errors in order to savor everything else.

Fanciful topics make for a fabulous read

Crystal skulls? Subterranean mole people? This isn't exactly my cup of tea since I tend more toward the literary end of the spectrum. It was, therefore, a rewarding and pleasant surprise when I read Stonecypher Road on the advice of some friends. First time authors, Warren and Nancy Longwell, have cooked up a little gem of a book, with a plot that's intricate and richly patterned. And they've liberally sprinkled it with passages written in my favorite language-Pulitzereeze. What a true delight!