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Sign up todayAmerican Meteor
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Learn moreIn this panoramic tale of manifest destiny, Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln’s funeral train, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days.
By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America’s fabulous and murderous history.
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He has won the Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and writing fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mark Bramhall is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has won numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award in 2008 and 2013, and been named a “Best Voice of the Year” by Publishers Weekly.
Reviews
“[A] pithy, compact, beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse’s prophecy for life on earth at the end.”
“Like the western sky, American Meteor stretches to the horizon in all directions…A lovely panorama to behold.”
“[American Meteor] is not only a history lesson but also a reading pleasure.”
“A spiritual treatise that forces its readers to examine their own role in history’s unceasing march forward [and] casts new and lyrical light on our nation’s violent past.”
“This feels like a campfire tale, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons.”
“Rather like Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man…[Lock] writes beautifully, with many subtle, complex insights.”
“Memorably encompasses grand themes and notions of transcendence without ever losing sight of the grit and moral horrors present in the period.”
“Narrator Mark Bramhall employs a slightly gravelly tone for world-weary Stephen Moran…Bramhall’s versatility in voicing dialogue shines as he portrays a diverse group of people across a range of ages and ethnicities…Bramhall’s perfect pacing and understated drama enliven Moran’s adventures.”
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