Clearcut

(Paperback)

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Description

Set in the gloriously rugged backwoods of the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, Nina Shengolds gripping debut novel follows three people in search of new lives deep into uncharted terrain of the body and heart.

When rough-hewn loner Earley Ritter picks up a hitchhiker one rainy night, he cant imagine how much it will change his life. A "shake-rat" who salvages cedar stumps left when loggers clearcut, Earley seems to have little in common with Reed Alton, a gifted Berkeley dropout. But when Earley meets Zan, the fiery and mysterious woman Reed has been following, erotic sparks fly in unexpected directions. Thrown together in the splendid isolation of the woods, with passions and tensions mounting, the unlikely trio achieves a fragile balance that-like their idyllic patch of forest-will be shattered by violence. At once a page-turning psychological drama and a colorful, wildly comic recreation of a lost time and place, Clearcut explores the boundaries that divide us, and what it takes to cross them.

Reviews

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Books of the Year
San Francisco Bay Times Best Books of the Year
A Book Sense Notable Selection
Nerve.coms Henry Miller Award for Best Literary Sex Scene

A red-hot love triangle. . . . Bursting with period detail and smoldering with sexual tension, Shengolds debut satisfies as both a beach read and a literary novel. GRADE: A." -Washington Post

Erotically daring. . . . Stunning prose. . . . Shengolds debut novel revisits the free love era with a fresh voice and an eye for the tricky fragility of inner peace. -Time Out New York

An entrancing debut novel. . . . A powerful recreation of the place, the time, the people, an affecting, surprising and sometimes even shocking tale. -Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Sumptuously intelligent. . . . The setting [is] rendered in stunning detail. . . . The books vivid characters win our attention and hearts." -Out magazine

Erotically atmospheric. . . . The sexual tension among the rough-and-ready lovers resonates thrillingly with the landscape. . . . A noveau hippie tale with boldness and spunk. -Kirkus Reviews

Steamy sexual atmosphere . . . elegant prose. -Seattle Times

A shaggy, steamy 70smenage a troisin a Pacific Northwest logging town. . . . Shengolds characters are richly three-dimensional, and plenty of authentic era detail makes for a ripping read. -Publishers Weekly

"A stunning book, one of the best literary novels I havecome acrossin a long time.Shengold's prose is fluent like a river, and her characters are as sharp as knivesin thisbeautifullove story." --Da Chen, author of Colors of the Mountain

"A beautiful, romantic, alive book. Clearcut is the patchouli and reckless love of the 70s, the rugged beauty and wreckage of the Pacific Northwest forests,woven together with a storyteller's grace and the great grand character of Earley Ritter, with whom every reader will fall in love. Amy Bloom, author of Love Invents Us

Author Bio

Nina Shengold is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and artistic director of the theatre group Actors & Writers. She lives in upstate New York.