The History of Now

Product Description Small, almost imperceptible changes are rippling through the New England village of Grandville, altering it in ways its inhabitants cannot yet imagine. Laced through a narrative of one recent year in Grandville's history are stories that reach back to a seventeenth-century family in Rotterdam, an eighteenth-century migration by a farmer's lonely son in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a nineteenth-century underground railway journey by a gifted runaway slave. Each episode comes to bear on the lives of Grandville s current residents. Does every event, no matter how small or distant in the past, influence all events that follow? Review How the past influences what follows, and how self-understanding inspires broader comprehension of all things: These are the themes of this gently philosophical family chronicle, the first volume of a planned trilogy. Klein, a veteran novelist and co-author of the whimsical bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar (2008), channels his inner Thornton Wilder in this piecemeal history of a New England village (Grandville, Mass.), which combines the family-album features of Our Town with the inconclusive fatalism of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Its central narrative focuses on Wendell deVries, heir to and proprietor of the Phoenix, a former vaudeville theater that s now the local movie house, and on long-divorced Wendell s family. His unmarried daughter Franny, who spearheads Grandville s community theater group and publicly protests the Iraq War, carries burdens she ll be unable to keep bearing. Other plots embrace Franny s beautiful, headstrong teenaged daughter Lila; a guidance counselor obsessed with Harvard and with managing his daughter s future; miscellaneous do-gooders and miscreants, culture vultures and over- and underachievers; and in a slowly developing subplot a Colombian youth, Hector Mondragon, whose flight from his country s dangers and his own misdeeds will lead him eventually to Grandville, and a deeply ironic fulfillment of his American dream. Wendell s hangdog decency, is reminiscent of Richard Russo s rumpled antiheroes just as Klein s plot carries reminders of Empire Falls. Absorbing, nevertheless, [with] enormously appealing characters. --Kirkus Review

In Grandville, a pleasant little village in New England, big things are about to happen. Wendell Devries, the projectionist at the movie theater, is about to find true love; Wendell's daughter is about to meet a challenge in the form of a new arrival from New York; and Wendell's granddaughter will embark on an unusual voyage of self-discovery. This is one of those novels you sink into, like a familiar and comfortable chair. Klein writes in clear, precise language, crafting characters who reveal themselves gradually, telling a small-town story that will resonate with every reader, even the big city types. This story is written in the present tense, with the author/narrator occasionally speaking directly to the reader--a device that frequently seems coy but here feels just right. In fact, everything about the novel, from its cast to its setting to its occasional use of allegory and metaphor, is just right. A definite change of pace for the author of various medical thrillers and mysteries (including the Elvis Presley mysteries), but a completely successful one. --Booklist

Set in the fictional, Richard Russo-like town of Grandville, MA, this sweet book is a satisfying read. Recommended. --Library Journal About the Author DANIEL KLEIN is co-author of The New York Times and international bestseller, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar--Understanding Philiosophy through Jokes. A graduate of Harvard in philosophy, Klein has also written numerous thrillers and mysteries.