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Cuyahoga Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A spectacularly inventive debut novel that reinvents the tall tale for our times—“Cuyahoga defies all modest description…[it] is ten feet tall if it’s an inch, and it’s a ramshackle joy from start to finish” (Brian Phillips, author of Impossible Owls).
Big Son is a spirit of the times—the times being 1837. Behind his broad shoulders, shiny hair, and church-organ laugh, Big Son practically made Ohio City all by himself. The feats of this proto-superhero have earned him wonder and whiskey toasts but very little in the way of fortune. And without money, Big cannot become an honest husband to his beloved Cloe (who may or may not want to be his wife, honestly).
In pursuit of a steady wage, our hero hits the (dirt) streets of Ohio City and Cleveland, the twin towns racing to become the first great metropolis of the West. Their rivalry reaches a boil over the building of a bridge across the Cuyahoga River—and Big stumbles right into the kettle. The resulting misadventures involve elderly terrorists, infrastructure collapse, steamboat races, wild pigs, and multiple ruined weddings.
Narrating this “deliriously fun” (Brian Phillips) tale is Medium Son—known as Meed—apprentice coffin maker, almanac author, orphan, and the younger brother of Big. Meed finds himself swept up in the action, and he is forced to choose between brotherly love and his own ambitions. His uncanny voice—plain but profound, colloquial but surprisingly poetic—elevates a slapstick frontier tale into a screwball origin myth for the Rust Belt.
In Cuyahoga, tragedy and farce jumble together in a riotously original voice. Evoking the Greek classics and the Bible alongside nods to Looney Tunes, Charles Portis, and Flannery O’Connor, Pete Beatty has written a rollicking revisionist (mid)Western with universal themes of family and fate—an old, weird America that feels brand new.
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“Beatty’s very funny, rambunctious debut novel, Cuyahoga…could be read with pleasure in 2002, or 1950. Or 1837, when most of it is set. It’s a satire of tall tales, but not a distant, too-cool treatment.”
— Los Angeles Times
Quotes
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“A light-hearted parody of America’s founding mythologies.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“A breezy fable of empire, class, conquest, and ecocide…Beatty revels in fabulizing a region he clearly knows and loves.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Entertaining, rambunctious, and touching…a nineteenth-century legend for twenty-first-century America,”
— Boston Globe -
“A richly embroidered, most original tale.”
— Akron Beacon Journal -
"A hilarious and moving exploration of family, home, and fate.”
— BuzzFeed -
“A great big American bouncy castle of a book—strange, exhilarating, hilarious, and alive—and every sentence so perfect! An absolute delight.”
— Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying
Awards
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Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
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A Millions.com Pick of Most Anticipated Books of the Year
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A BuzzFeed Books Pick of Most Anticipated Books of 2020
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About Pete Beatty
Pete Beatty is a native of the Cleveland area of Ohio. He has taught writing at Kent State University and the University of Alabama. He works at the University of Alabama Press.
About Feodor Chin
Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.