American Meteor

Starred review from December 1, 2014
Lock's latest historical reimagining (after the time-traveling Huck Finn novel The Boy in His Winter) follows an orphan from Brooklyn to the Battle of Little Big Horn, where he irrevocably alters history. Listening to the "clamor of my heart," 13-year-old Stephen Moran enlists in the Union Army as a bugler. His time on the battlefield comes to an abrupt end at the Battle of Five Forks, where he loses an eye, kills a Confederate soldier, and receives the Medal of Honor. While recovering, Moran meets Walt Whitman, who gets him assigned as bugler for Lincoln's funeral train to Illinois. Thus begins Moran's lifelong roving of the West, his spiritual restlessness set against the backdrop of westward-driving Americaâa wild, malformed place that's really Moran's primary antagonist. After riding the nascent railroads and apprenticing for photographer William Henry Jackson, Moran ends up as the personal photographer for General Custer, his story culminating in a bloody finale during Custer's Last Stand. The crafty Moran is a perfect everyman: his naïve, directionless unrest gradually cleaves from the irresponsible aggression of Manifest Destiny, for which Custer becomes a figurehead, and focuses into something far more wise, as readers witness. Likewise, Moran's tall tale is a perfect fit for Lock's storytelling: this feels like a campfire tale, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right.

April 15, 2015
A young Civil War veteran ventures West, encountering violence and moments of revelation on his way. Lock, whose work often encompasses eras and notions of history and literature in unexpected ways, is working in a more restrained manner in this novel. Narrator Stephen Moran encounters real-life figures (including Walt Whitman and Ulysses S. Grant), his path quietly intersecting with major historical events from the Civil War to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Initially a bugler, Stephen loses one eye in a battle and winds up working on President Abraham Lincoln's funeral train. From there his life takes him West, which will further shape his character, especially his time working for photographer William Henry Jackson. There's a brief metaphor involving an aging Huck Finn that will stand on its own to some readers and evoke for others Lock's The Boy In His Winter (2014), in which Huck and Jim travel through decades' worth of history via the Mississippi River. Like that novel, this one is structured with an older narrator looking back over his life. As the story progresses, Stephen has fateful encounters with George Custer and Crazy Horse, leading to moments of vengeance and haunting realizations. Stephen is aware of his moral shortcomings and conscious of the racial conflicts and power struggles-some of them fatal-that play out around him. "There was room on the calendar for only one martyrdom in April," Stephen notes after a run-in with a group of Confederate sympathizers after Lincoln's death. He's a memorable narrator, seeking to understand the new medium of photography but also capable of acts of swift violence. A subplot involving his visions of the future-"It came to me in dreams. Terrible ones!" he says-arrives halfway through the book but turns out to have a solid payoff. This novel memorably encompasses grand themes and notions of transcendence without ever losing sight of the grit and moral horrors present in the period.

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June 1, 2015

Stephen Moran, a teenage Union Army bugler, is chosen to accompany President Abraham Lincoln's funeral train from Washington, DC, to Springfield, IL. He then follows the Union Pacific railroad west and becomes a photographer, ending up at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Along the way, he encounters Walt Whitman, Ulysses S. Grant, Crazy Horse, and General Custer. While initially sold on the virtues of Manifest Destiny, Moran sees firsthand its dark side, and his anger toward the deliberate destruction of Native American peoples leads him to exact revenge. Stephen is by design an unreliable narrator; he states numerous times that he is a habitual liar, and many of his recollections have the feel of tall tales. Framed as a story Stephen told to his doctor at the end of his life, the narrative rambles and loops and contradicts itself. The structure, setting, and demythologizing of American westward expansion draw obvious parallels to Thomas Berger's Little Big Man. VERDICT Lock (Love Among the Particles) successfully blends beautiful language reminiscent of 19th-century prose with cynicism and bald, ugly truth. Recommended for most fiction readers.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2015
Like many another Irishman, Stephen Moran is snatched up by the Union Army, but because he's 16 and small, he becomes a bugler. His one attempt to fire a musket results in a blinded eye, but nonetheless General Grant pins a Medal of Honor on him and dispatches him to accompany Lincoln's body to its final resting place in Springfield. Rather like Thomas Berger's Little Big Man (1964), Stephen witnesses the building of the transcontinental railroad, the decimation of the buffalo, Indian genocide, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, encountering not only Grant but also the despicable Union Pacific magnate Thomas Durant, the photographer William Henry Jackson, Walt Whitman, George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, and the mystical Crazy Horse. It's a lot to pack into a short novel, but Lock manages it with rueful grace. Most of the story will seem familiar to any student of American history, but he writes beautifully, with many subtle, complex insights, such as, There is no greater infidelity than memory's desertion, Behind every gunman stands another gunman, and It takes time to perfect cruelty. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)