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Now Reading ...
Jul. 2nd, 2011 12:04 pm( Longish passage here )
I think this one is going to be a fun and interesting ride. The main character is a hometown football hero from Fredericksburg, TX. For those who aren't familiar with it, Fredericksburg is a small town in the TX Hill Country. It's beautiful, charming, very German, and very, very insular. Basically, if you weren't born there ... you are an outsider for life. It used to be a ranching town, but it's now a huge tourist destination. A lot of artists, writers, etc. live in the Hill Country, and Fredericksburg has many lovely art galleries and fun shops -- mostly clustered along Main Street (Haupstrasse). Beck, the main character, left Fredericksburg at the age of 18. Instead of choosing to play football for UT, he took a scholarship to Notre Dame. And he hasn't been back to his hometown for 24 years. At the start of the book, his wife has died, and Beck finds himself faced with the daunting task of trying to continue practicing law in a big Chicago firm (3,000 billable hours a year) and raising two kids on his own. He quickly realizes he can't do it, and he heads home to the Hill Country and Fredericksburg in the hopes of finding a safe place to raise his kids. He finds that the preceding 24 years have changed Fredericksburg on the surface, but, underneath it all ... it's still the same town he left behind.
So far, I have to admit a fondness for this one simply based on the fact that it is set in my old stomping grounds. I grew up in the Hill Country. Not in Fredericksburg, but not all that far from it, either. I've been to most of the places mentioned in this book, so reading it is a bit like coming home for me, too. Plus, I can already tell that Beck is a good guy. His dad, J.B. (who decided, even before Beck came home, that Beck needed to run for judge ... but, of course, didn't ask Beck about it) is quite a fun character -- annoying at times, but in a funny way. And with a lot of heart. And Beck's kids are adorable ... and heartbreakingly fractured by their mother's death. I'm not that far into this one yet, so we'll see how it goes.
I think this one is going to be a fun and interesting ride. The main character is a hometown football hero from Fredericksburg, TX. For those who aren't familiar with it, Fredericksburg is a small town in the TX Hill Country. It's beautiful, charming, very German, and very, very insular. Basically, if you weren't born there ... you are an outsider for life. It used to be a ranching town, but it's now a huge tourist destination. A lot of artists, writers, etc. live in the Hill Country, and Fredericksburg has many lovely art galleries and fun shops -- mostly clustered along Main Street (Haupstrasse). Beck, the main character, left Fredericksburg at the age of 18. Instead of choosing to play football for UT, he took a scholarship to Notre Dame. And he hasn't been back to his hometown for 24 years. At the start of the book, his wife has died, and Beck finds himself faced with the daunting task of trying to continue practicing law in a big Chicago firm (3,000 billable hours a year) and raising two kids on his own. He quickly realizes he can't do it, and he heads home to the Hill Country and Fredericksburg in the hopes of finding a safe place to raise his kids. He finds that the preceding 24 years have changed Fredericksburg on the surface, but, underneath it all ... it's still the same town he left behind.
So far, I have to admit a fondness for this one simply based on the fact that it is set in my old stomping grounds. I grew up in the Hill Country. Not in Fredericksburg, but not all that far from it, either. I've been to most of the places mentioned in this book, so reading it is a bit like coming home for me, too. Plus, I can already tell that Beck is a good guy. His dad, J.B. (who decided, even before Beck came home, that Beck needed to run for judge ... but, of course, didn't ask Beck about it) is quite a fun character -- annoying at times, but in a funny way. And with a lot of heart. And Beck's kids are adorable ... and heartbreakingly fractured by their mother's death. I'm not that far into this one yet, so we'll see how it goes.