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It's 1897. Gold has been discovered in the Yukon. New York is under the sway of Hearst and Pulitzer. And in a few months, an American battleship will explode in a Cuban harbor, plunging the U.S. into war. Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, this is the unforgettable story of that extraordinary moment: the turn of the twentieth century, as seen by one of the greatest storytellers of our time.
Shot through with a lyrical intensity and stunning detail that recall Doctorow and Deadwood both, A Moment in the Sun takes the whole era in its sights--from the white-racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in the Philippines. Beginning with Hod Brackenridge searching for his fortune in the North, and hurtling forward on the voices of a breathtaking range of men and women--Royal Scott, an African American infantryman whose life outside the military has been destroyed; Diosdado Concepcion, a Filipino insurgent fighting against his country's new colonizers; and more than a dozen others, Mark Twain and President McKinley's assassin among them--this is a story as big as its subject: history rediscovered through the lives of the people who made it happen.
A New York Times Notable Book 2011!
A Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2011.
[ A Moment in the Sun 's] true importance lies not in its rearview relevance but in its commitment to recalling in heroic detail a little-known and contradictory historical moment, a sunny time of American pride but also of hubris in sun-beaten locales... Sayles is not a neutral channel, but in his respect for facts both documented and extrapolated, he is devoted to offering us a new understanding of the past.
--Tom LeClair, New York Times Book Review
A brutal picaresque complete with melancholy whores, militaristic robber barons, desperate cutthroat prospectors, and puppet soldiers... His period slang rings dead-on perfect. [Sayles's] great achievement is to illuminate the parallel between imperialism and racism in turn-of-the-century America--indeed, to shine so glaring a light on it that even if we screw our eyes shut, the horror remains.
--William T. Vollmann, Bookforum
Independent filmmaker John Sayles has managed to create a work that is both cinematic and literary in its scope and style--a blend so entrancing that you could polish off its 955 pages in one long weekend. It begins in 1897 during the Yukon gold rush and takes us into the Spanish-American war, the Filipino fight for independence, racial injustice and the plight of working people throughout the United States. Short, powerful chapters follow four unconnected characters to create a mosaic of America as a nascent superpower, underscoring the personal and cultural consequences of its ambitions. If you only read one book this summer, make it A Moment in the Sun.
--Lucia Silva, NPR's Morning Edition
Following four major characters and dozens of sharply drawn smaller ones, Moment jumps from a horse thief's prison break to a Filipino revolutionary secretly photographing a government execution, creating a story so big that even the larger-than-life characters that Sayles wea
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