In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden: A Novel FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
In her elegantly crafted second novel, Kathleen Cambor lives up to the promise reflected in her graceful debut, The Book of Mercy, taking readers inside the minds and hearts of people living on the verge of doom. In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden is set in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1899; there, on Memorial Day weekend, 2,200 lives were lost when heavy rains caused the South Fork Dam to burst, releasing a thunderous wall of water that crashed down upon the valley 450 feet below. But if the forces causing the Johnstown Flood were natural, the agencies that brought about the devastation of the city were human.
The South Fork Dam was the property of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which, despite repeated warnings, neglected to make the necessary repairs to ensure the dam's stability. As Cambor explores the lives of the club's elite members, such as the industrialists Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie, and Andrew Mellon, blame mounts like the ultimate death toll. "These men who kept obsessive track of all their holdings, their vast properties," writes Cambor, "had no interest in the safety or the structure of the dam. It was as if no people lived below it, no world existed in the mountains but the one they were creating." But Cambor avoids demonizing the moguls, painting them in an utterly human light; we encounter them as characters whose hopes have been squelched by obligation to family, as lovers hollowed by loss, and as new men haunted by past failures.
Likewise, in Johnstown, although there are many victims, there are few innocents. Frank Fallon, a Civil War veteran and foreman at the Cambria Iron Company, lusts for Grace McIntyre, a librarian with a secret past -- and his troubled wife's best friend. And although Fallon's son Daniel is in love with Nora Talbot, a naturalist (and member of the elite club upstream), he nevertheless sleeps with a secretary at the mill to acquire records of the deaths and maimings that occurred there.
Death and loss -- through epidemics, war, and gruesome accidents -- are a constant in the lives of these characters. Cambor drives at meaning through her characters' struggles, for every glimpse of their suffering and every fleeting moment of ease is tinted with dark foreknowledge of the apocalypse to come. Her characters are flooded with memories that both preserve and warp their histories, forever haunting their spirits even in the act of healing. With In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden, Kathleen Cambor reveals not only the devastating fragility of life but also the unseen fault lines beneath the surface of the human heart. (Elise Vogel)
Elise Vogel is a freelance writer living in New York City.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden is the story of a bittersweet romance set against the backdrop of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood, a tragedy that cost some 2,200 lives when the South Fork dam burst on Memorial Day weekend, 1889. The dam was the site of a gentlemen's club that attracted some of the wealthiest industrialists of the day - Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Andrew Carnegie - and served as a summertime idyll for the families of the rich." "In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden imagines the lives that were lived, lost, and irreparably changed by a tragedy that could have been averted: Frank Fallon, a Civil War veteran whose wife never recovered from the early deaths of their children and who finds himself enamored of her best friend; James Talbot, a lawyer for the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club tormented by the blatant disregard for the dam's safety and his own conflicting ambitions; and James's daughter, Nora, whose summerlong courtship by Daniel Fallon, Frank's surviving son, will haunt her for the rest of her life."--BOOK JACKET.
FROM THE CRITICS
Denise Kersten - USA Today
Cambor's exquisite prose is the spoonful of sugar that makes this lesson in history bittersweet. She writes of their lives before the flood, filling in history's gaps with emotions and personalities, only reaching the catastrophe and its aftermath in the last chapters.
Jabari Asim - Washington Post
It can't be easy to sustain the suspense in a novel where the resolution is foreordained, but Cambor acquits herself admirably....[W]hole personalities emerge in succinct strokes. The dynamics of father-daughter relationships seem to exert a particular hold on Cambor's imagination, and her portrayal of them seems both sympathetic and knowing.
Publishers Weekly
Cambor (The Book of Mercy) deserves a wide readership for her second novel, set against the backdrop of the Johnstown, Pa., flood of 1889. The South Fork Dam separates two very different worlds: above it lies the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whose members include captains of industry like Henry Frick and Andrew Mellon; below it are scattered several working-class towns. When James Talbot, a lawyer hired to secure the club's charter, alerts the members to the earthen dam's structural problems, his warnings go unheeded. Talbot, haunted by his failure to serve in the Civil War, determines to assuage his guilt by keeping watch over the dam and its constant repairs, but the wealthy club members have no interest in the families living below South Fork. Cambor creates a fully imagined cast: Frank Fallon, a steel mill foreman and Civil War veteran; his wife, Julia, who lost two of her four children in the 1879 diphtheria epidemic; and their surviving son, 23-year-old Daniel, who studies Greek with Grace McIntyre, a librarian from Boston who has secrets of her own. Daniel falls in love with James Talbot's daughter, Nora, a budding naturalist and scholar who holds herself separate from the South Fork club members. Cambor has a gift for imparting much factual information lyrically and thrillingly: the process of manufacturing steel rods is rendered as beautifully as Nora's sexual awakening. Diamond sharp, deep and passionate, this is an accomplished, moving work. Agent, Heather Schroeder. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
On Memorial Day, 1889, Pennsylvania's South Fork dam burst, and the resulting flood claimed over 2000 lives. The lake formed by the dam was the site of an exclusive summer club whose members included wealthy industrialists Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Andrew Carnegie. Mixing these historical characters with fictional ones, Cambor's tale highlights the indifference of the wealthy to the fate of others. The book centers on several characters, including Civil War veteran Frank Fallon, whose son Daniel becomes involved with Nora Talbot, one of the wealthy summer visitors to the lake. Meanwhile, Grace McIntyre, a woman with a mysterious past, becomes town librarian, befriending Frank's wife and eventually becoming enamored of Frank himself. Using flashbacks, Cambor creates a well-written and intriguing tale of impending doom that shows what can happen when ambition conflicts with good sense. Highly recommended for all public libraries.--Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Originally, the South Fork dam held water for the use of the railroad, but eventually a land speculator turned the surrounding area and the lake into a retreat for the wealthy, including Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie. The people who lived below the dam, in Johnstown, PA, often worked at the retreat and sometimes mingled with the elite of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. For the most part, though, Johnstown and the Club were separate worlds-until they were united by the catastrophic flood of 1889 that took more than 2000 lives. For Frank Fallon and others who live and work in Johnstown, death and destruction overpower all else. For the club members, making amends proves of little help in alleviating their permanent sense of guilt. In her descriptions of Mellon, Frick, and Carnegie, the author contrasts the lives of the elite with those of the Fallon family and others in Johnstown's workforce to present a perspective on the flood's destruction from many economic levels. In the end, the tragedy overwhelms all of the survivors and makes for an unforgettable story.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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