Tom Connor’s Gift

by David Allan Cates

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Pub Date Oct 13 2014 | Archive Date Nov 06 2018

Bangtail Press | Independent Book Publishers Association Members' Titles

General Fiction (Adult)

Description

A recently-widowed doctor, stunned by grief, retreats to a cabin on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front. Inside she has a puppy and a stack of letters from an old lover. Outside, there's a bear. As she revisits her letters from Tom Connor, we come to see, through his eyes, the dusty, broken alleys of Central America during the war years. The two narratives taken together explore themes of life-long love, about what we can see only when we are ready to see, and how hope can grow in the darkest of places. The third in what the author sees as his “homecoming trilogy” (after Hunger in American and Ben Armstrong’s Strange Trip Home), Tom Connor’s Gift shines a light on the transformative act of storytelling itself, and is destined to be received as one of the most important novels of the year.

A recently-widowed doctor, stunned by grief, retreats to a cabin on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front. Inside she has a puppy and a stack of letters from an old lover. Outside, there's a bear. As she...

A Note From the Publisher

Also available in ebook format.

Advance Praise

“Tom Connor’s Gift is the gift we all seek, the gift of love in the face of grief, violence, loss, and heartbreak. In a deeply felt and vividly told story, David Cates connects the interior lives of a farm woman in the wilderness grieving her husband’s death and her long-lost lover—a wandering man torn by the beauties and terrors of Central America.”
Annick Smith

“Tom Connor’s Gift is a fearless and instructive odyssey into the rustic places of the heart that still baffle and dictate our lives.”
Rick DeMarinis

“Tom Connor’s Gift is a gift all right—hilarious and moving—a two for one: two voices, two stories, two struggles to come to terms with love and longing, in prose that is vivid, urgent, brave, and true.”
Dinah Lenney

“Put a widow in a cabin at the edge of Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front with nothing but memories and a marauding bear outside to keep her company and what do you get? A tenderly-told tale of grief, recovery, and a message of love from the past. David Allan Cates’s Tom Connor’s Gift is indeed a gift to readers looking for a novel that will ask them to slow down and think about questions like “How do we endure suffering? And how—when life has flung us far and wide—how do we get home again?”
David Abrams

“Tom Connor’s Gift is a wonderful book, standing on its tiptoes, stretching out its fingers to brush against a magical realism that is transformative.”
Mark Metcalf