About the Author

Reynolds Price (1933-2011) was born in Macon, North Carolina. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he taught at Duke beginning in 1958 and was the James B. Duke Professor of English at the time of his death. His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.

Reviews

Paul Skenazy San Francisco Chronicle An introspective and philosophical tale...this novel is a carefully conceived series of events trapped in deeply considered ideas about how art both reproduces and creates our sense of life.

Reginald Ollen The Nation One comes away from this novel with the certainty that, regardless of what cultural baggage -- or garbage -- we carry into the forest, the majesty of nature and the mysterious spirit of our Native American past are things to carry home forever.

Robert Wilson USA Today The Tongues of Angels may be Price's most inviting novel yet.

Paul Skenazy San Francisco Chronicle An introspective and philosophical tale...this novel is a carefully conceived series of events trapped in deeply considered ideas about how art both reproduces and creates our sense of life.
Reginald Ollen The Nation One comes away from this novel with the certainty that, regardless of what cultural baggage -- or garbage -- we carry into the forest, the majesty of nature and the mysterious spirit of our Native American past are things to carry home forever.
Robert Wilson USA Today The Tongues of Angels may be Price's most inviting novel yet.

Vintage Price, this evocative novel explores the nature of love, memory, and artistry. Bridge Boatner is a middle-aged painter looking back to the summer of 1954 when he worked as a counselor at a boys' camp in the Smokey Mountains, a summer that had a profound effect on his vision as an artist. Central to the story is the figure of Raphael Noren, a 14-year-old with extraordinary abilities as an Indian dancer whose fate is to die young but who ``plainly prized the world'' despite the hard knocks he'd received. ``Love worked Rafe,'' who ``watched his life and changed his story in ways that kept it from closing in waste and fear.'' The lessons Bridge learns from his encounter with Rafe remain always ``deep under the lines I've drawn and especially the shadows.'' Some may quibble that this love story with a difference borders on the melodramatic, but (speaking as a former camper) it splendidly captures the essence of the era. Truly refreshing in its gentleness and innocence, this book is highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/89.--David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.