Review of 'The Conquest of Canaan (Dodo Press)' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
If this were fanfiction, I would call it pure idfic. The writing is really top-notch, but what sells the story (to me, anyway) is the hurt/comfort vibe and the exaggeration of how the protagonist is treated, and his and his love interest's character development. In addition, it's a great window into small-city American life around the turn of the century, sort of like The Music Man, but a bit darker and grittier.
As a teenager, Joe Louden was known as a bad one - largely because his stepmother insisted on his father spending all the money on her own son, leaving Joe to support himself shamefully by selling newspapers. Joe hung out with a rough crowd: the transient working class, gasp African-Americans, and the family's very poor tomboy neighbor, Ariel. After leaving in disgrace, Joe returns years later as a credentialed lawyer; he expects that his reputation will have …
If this were fanfiction, I would call it pure idfic. The writing is really top-notch, but what sells the story (to me, anyway) is the hurt/comfort vibe and the exaggeration of how the protagonist is treated, and his and his love interest's character development. In addition, it's a great window into small-city American life around the turn of the century, sort of like The Music Man, but a bit darker and grittier.
As a teenager, Joe Louden was known as a bad one - largely because his stepmother insisted on his father spending all the money on her own son, leaving Joe to support himself shamefully by selling newspapers. Joe hung out with a rough crowd: the transient working class, gasp African-Americans, and the family's very poor tomboy neighbor, Ariel. After leaving in disgrace, Joe returns years later as a credentialed lawyer; he expects that his reputation will have been forgotten, but finds that it's been embroidered ever since he left, and as a result nobody respectable will speak to him, let alone hire him. He takes up defending his rough companions instead, which only makes him less popular. In the meantime, Ariel and her grandfather inherited a large sum of money and went off to Paris, where she became refined, fashionable, and a drop-dead knockout. When she gets back, she, of course, will speak to Joe, and her actions throw the whole town into turmoil. Joe defends an innocent man accused of murder, and in the end the town comes to recognize his worth.
This basic summary doesn't really let on how much the text lingers indulgently on Joe's faithfulness to those who've been kind to him, how dreadfully the upper strata of Canaan treat him, and so on. To some extent, this is a grown-up and masculine version of A Little Princess. So if you're into that kind of story, then full steam ahead!
Warning: There is a certain amount of African-American eye dialect, which is extremely cringey.