Prodigal blues was hard to put down, although i wanted to many times because of the nature of the story.
Synopsis from amazon:
After he finds himself stranded at a truck stop in Missouri, Mark Sieber gets one of the biggest shocks of his life when he recognizes the face of a little girl on a Missing poster as belonging to the same little girl he saw only a few minutes before. Looking around for some sign of her, he comes back to his table in the restaurant to find the little sitting there, waiting for him.
As the police and media begin to converge on the truck stop, Mark retreats back to his hotel room to call his wife and let her know what's going on, only to be taken hostage by the same people who released the little girl. But his abductors are little more than children themselves.
Ranging in ages from 12 to 19, Mark's abductors are in the process of escaping from a sadistic pedophile known to them only as "Grendel" a man whose practices include torture and mutilation specifically, mutilation of the face.
Mark's abductors have all been mutilated by Grendel who may be very close behind them and need someone with a "normal face" to help them carry out their plan for justice and returning home.
The vileness of the story is hard to swallow at times, but Braunbeck's wit and humor keep the story from getting too morose.
The denouement of this novel left me teary-eyed while being both bittersweet as well as haunting. Immediately upon completing the book,(after i wiped the tear from my eye of course,) I thought about how neatly constructed this novel was: the beginning being repeated in the end, the sayings dispersed throughout the story being repeated once more, worries being tapered off, and hope for the future right at the end. It almost feels as I imagine a senior thesis for a masters in English fiction must be.
5/5
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