Call number
Genres
Publication
New York: Tor, 1998, c1997.
Pages
445
Description
The Nix family has arrived. And Latchahie County will never be the same. In an effort at improving his family's lot, the Nixes have moved to rural Florida to open Dogland: a combination zoo, restaurant and motel. But it isn't long before Nix and his clan of eccentric supporters run afoul of unsympathetic locals. The problem? Luke Nix has hired Ethorne Hawkins. Hawkins is black. And it's 1959.
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1997
Physical description
445 p.; 8.7 inches
ISBN
0312866054 / 9780312866051
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User reviews
LibraryThing member jaygheiser
An engrossing novel with a wickedly delightful twist at the end. Nominally a book for youths, it deals with some subtle issues of good versus evil, portraying a spiritual battle that plays itself around us, whether or not we choose to be aware of it.
LibraryThing member bzedan
It's like Harper Lee and Isabel Allende got together to write something—one building the myth-touched world the other's adult-omniscient, nostalgia narrates.
LibraryThing member PamelaDLloyd
This novel hit just the right notes time and time again. Dogland, the attraction, is so quintessentially American that just about anyone who has ever taken a road trip in America will respond to it. (I have to admit that the time and place were particularly poignant for me, because of the many road
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trips my family took to Florida, starting just a few years after 1959, the year the novel is set.) Luke Nix's wild stories reminded me very much of my own father, who loved to tell tall tales to his children and still brags about having fooled us into believing he had fought in the French and Indian War. Grandma Bette's adamant rejection of any claims that the family is not of pure European extraction has been played out in many American families and the conflict around the hiring of Ethorne Hawkins, a black man, in the rural South is another classic American theme. This book is complex and goes far beyond its genre classification. It may not be the ever elusive Great American Novel, but it comes darn close. Show Less