Roman/Machart,Bruce//Le Sillage De L'Oubli - Machart,Bruce

On a moonless Texas night in 1895, an ambitious young landowner suffers the

loss of “the only woman he’s ever been fond of” when his wife dies during

childbirth with the couple’s fourth boy, Karel. From an early age Karel proves

so talented on horseback that his father enlists him to ride in acreage-staked

horse races against his neighbors. But Karel is forever haunted by thoughts of

the mother he never knew, by the bloodshot blame in his father’s eyes, and

permanently marked by the yoke he and his brothers are forced to wear to plow

the family fields. Confident only in the saddle, Karel is certain that the

horse “wants the whip the same way he wants his pop’s strap . . . the closest

he ever gets to his father’s touch.” In the winter of 1910, Karel rides in the

ultimate high-stakes race against a powerful Spanish patriarch and his

alluring daughters. Hanging in the balance are his father’s fortune, his

brother’s futures, and his own fate. Fourteen years later, with the stake of

the race still driven hard between him and his brothers, Karel is finally

forced to dress the wounds of his past and to salvage the tattered fabric of

his family.

Reminiscent of Kent Haruf’s portrayals of hope amidst human heartbreak and

Cormac McCarthy’s finely hewn evocations of the American Southwest, Bruce

Machart’s striking debut is as well wrought as it is riveting. It compels us

to consider the inescapable connections between sons and their mothers,

between landscape and family, and between remembrance and redemption.