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Author
of the highly acclaimed novel, The Huntsman, Whitney Terrell
opens his new novel on Thanksgiving in Kansas City, Missouri. The lights on the
buildings of the fictitious Campanile Shopping Area will ignite momentarily.
We’re not introduced to the thirty thousand spectators enjoying the festive
event. Instead, we’re drawn to the platform on a bridge over Brush Creek where
the developers, the Bowens, and their associates congregate, and where Count
Basie has a platform for his white enameled grand piano. These are the players:
a microcosm, to be sure, of power and opportunity; control and deceit; money and
deals; business and family.
Whitney Terrell, a Kansas City native, has written a provocative and
insightful novel of this first city of the West. He characterizes the city:
think of Ward Just’s Chicago or William Kennedy’s Albany or Richard Russo’s
Empire Falls. The city takes on meaning from the lives and dreams of its
inhabitants. Beginning with the adoption of the Eisenhower Highway plan, which
would connect K. C. to points in all directions, the novel spans roughly thirty
years and three generations. It's narrated by Jack Acheson, whose father Alton
is a self-made man, a deal maker playing all the angles to move up and get
closer to the top.
The only Thanksgiving dinner that Alton spends at home is one during which he is
cultivating a new investor — Bobby Garaciello, a man who owns a little “piece”
of just about everything in Kansas City. Alton Acheson cannot be seen by the
Bowen Company courting the likes of Bobby Garaciello. He begins his pitch as
they look from the house over to the Campanile — the lights due to ignite
momentarily:
“You do understand… don’t you, Bobby? ... This was all a dream. You get
that, don’t you? The walls of this house, that road out there, every single
damn building on the Campanile. It was Prudential Bowen’s imagination —
nobody thought the city should come out south this way. It’s because this
guy understood that the automobile was more important than the streetcar —
just like what’s happening with the highway — he built the place with
garages, free parking, a drive-in shopping area. And because he thought it
up, we all have to live in it. Nobody has that kind of power, to affect a
city’s memory —and the money... He bought this entire area for a hundred
dollars an acre originally and sells this house in 1918 for twenty grand. Do
you realize the kind of return that offers, not to mention what it’s worth
today? It’s like stealing, with the very great advantage that it’s perfectly
respectable... and those are the same kinds of returns that will be
available on this MacVess property, I promise you.”
Family
business, fathers and sons, red lines, mobsters, and progress are fully examined
against the backdrop of Kansas City in this impressive novel. Terrell knows his
way around the bars and restaurants, the musicians and schools, the parks and
streets, and so he fabricates a fascinating story of time and place.
Review by Sarah Bagby, September 6, 2005
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