Prudence by David Treuer.
In a recent editorial for the Huffington Post, author David Treuer described the personal origins of his complex and powerful new novel Prudence, published in early 2015 by Riverhead Books. As Treuer explains, Prudence‘s themes reflect the author’s relationship toward his own, bifurcated Native American and Jewish heritage:
“This is my mother’s milk and my patrimony, I suppose. On one hand there is a sense that Indians live outside of time… on the other, my father’s life was shaped enormously by forces of history that are insolubly linked to place and time: Vienna, 1938. The Pacific, 1944-45. Two strands, then, separate but tangled in me. And I never knew what to do with them. I never knew how to braid them, to make with them a stronger rope.”
With themes of racism, war, desire, and forbidden, thwarted love, Prudence‘s melancholy is as multi-layered as its plot. However, as author Anthony Marra concluded in his thoughtful review of the book for the Washington Post:
“It isn’t the sorrow uniting these characters that makes Prudence such a powerful book. Instead, it’s the possibility of reconciliation they stumble into, particularly when that possibility seems precluded.”
If you are interested in having Treuer discuss Prudence or his other works at your next literary event, contact Books In Common.
