Product Description

Senator Kip Davies is dead, shot execution-style by a man news reports call a member of "an ultra-right-wing militia" from Maine. The hunt for the killer is nationwide, and yet the wounded assassin, Robert Drummond, has found refuge where he might least expect it-in the home of an out-of-town senator. There, the senator's wife and daughter become Drummond's protectors-if not his hostages-while he grows stronger during the next several heart-pulsing weeks. As they become intimately involved with Drummond, the two women learn firsthand the philosophy and psychology of the militia movement that has become such a terrifying puzzlement in America. And when their desperate drama ends, in a fashion at once unpredictable and inevitable, it brings with it a measure of understanding of how this country functions and dysfunctions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1118187 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Chute's (Merry Men) latest novel is so alarming in theme, farfetched in plot, graceless and sloppy in prose and close to pornographic in tone that it's difficult to consider it an effort by a serious writer. Robert "Ruff" Drummond, a construction worker from Maine and a member of a right-wing militia, assassinates a U.S. senator in Boston. (This is okay, we learn, because the senator is a sleaze and, moreover, a tool of the big corporations that run America and crush the poor.) Badly wounded, Robert makes it to the palatial home of his intended next victim, Senator Jerry Creighton (who is in Washington)Aand collapses. The caretakers who discover Robert are so sympathetic to the idea of the have-nots rising up to kill the oppressors that they enlist the cooperation of the senator's daughter Kristy, who decides to shelter and nurse Robert rather than turn him over to the authorities. Kristy, an ultra-feminist Radcliffe grad and professor of women's studies, is at home because she's having a nervous breakdown. As soon as she lays eyes on Robert, she is smitten, and after she views "the shaking of his loose penis" and takes his temperature by means of a rectal thermometer, she is a bundle of erotic nerve endings waiting to be fulfilled. When Robert regains consciousness, he is adorableAin spite of his garish tattoos, which include a blue swastika. He chuckles, he tells jokes, he plays chess with Kristy and her mother, Connie, who is a similarly randy sort, and soon Robert is boffing both women. Reactions to this overheated tract may range from hilarity to disgust, as the narrative exudes outrage and resentment toward a government that ostensibly harasses people who own guns, refuses to legalize marijuana and exposes children to highfalutin theories of education. It is pulp fiction of the lowest order, manipulative and totally implausible. (Would Kristy and Connie spontaneously betray their "liberal" principles and protect Robert if he weren't such a hunk?) Chute's bombast hits high gear as her characters agree that because the government exploits poor people in menial jobs, the government must be swept away. In an author's note, Chute says that she's been working on a larger book for years, which will be "the true story" of the militia movement in the Northeast. One hopes it will have more sense and literary merit than this one. (May) FYI: Chute's publisher says that "she has been active in the militia movement for some time."
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Robert Drummond, a 44-year-old member of an ultra-right-wing Maine militia, puts a gun to the head of a U.S. senator and pulls the trigger. Drummond, shot by law enforcement officers at the scene, flees to the Beacon Hill mansion of another senator, Jerry Creighton. Discovered bleeding and near death by the oft-absent senator's beautiful young daughter, Kristy, and his feisty, attractive, free-thinking wife, Connie, Drummond is hidden in the daughter's top-floor quarters and nursed back to health by a local vet, the family's servants, and the Creighton women. Chute, herself actively involved in two militias and the author of the widely acclaimed and terrifically written The Beans of Egypt, Maine (LJ 3/1/85), would have the reader believe that these two privileged women willingly fall under the sexual thrall of a boorish, violent man whose bedroom behavior is as vulgar as his full-body tattoos. The novel deteriorates further when it is revealed that Drummond sought refuge on this particular estate in order to assassinate Senator Creighton as well, and still the women protect him and assist in his escape. Not recommended.?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Another blast of proletarian rage from Chute, but lacking, regrettably, the solid characterizations that anchored Merry Men (1994) and The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985). Generally considered a left-wing writer, Chute here declares herself no-wing [Acknowledgments] as she depicts the odyssey of a putative rightist from Maine whose heroes are Latin American guerrillas. Robert Drummond has assassinated US Senator Kip Davies in a Boston hotel; four fellow members of the Snow Men militia are dead, but the badly wounded Robert finds his way to the Beacon Hill home of another senator, liberal Jerry Creighton. Hes sheltered there by the Kristy Creighton, the senators daughter, and her mother, Connie, both of whom find the militia man as sexually irresistible as he is politically disturbing. The plot (never Chutes strong point) consists basically of Roberts convalescence over a month or so as he enlightens the privileged Creighton women about the ugly realities of American life and as the FBI closes in. In the past, Chutes fiery denunciations of corporate capitalisms impact on poor people have worked in tandem with strong fictional portraits. Here, the upper-middle-class Kristy and Connie are embarrassing clichs with insufficiently delineated inner lives; the spiritual crisis that has brought Kristy home from her job as chair of a womens studies program, for example, is alluded to but never explained. Robert is a fuller character, and Chute commendably refuses to clean up his messy opinions (dead-on observations about the way politicians of all parties serve big business mixed with creepy diatribes against this fuckin socialist setup and arrogant bitch broad feminists). But the novels politics are as incoherent as Drummondsmaking for an aesthetic and, arguably, a moral failure. Chutes blunt class-consciousness and energetic prose are as bracing as ever. Lets hope that the longer work-in-progress she refers to in the Authors Note (the `true story of the `Militia Movement in New England as I have experienced it) makes better use of them. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

The Radical Chic Blanch
This is the best thing Chute has ever written. So why did it turn her into an unperson among the literary elite? Ostensibly because her hero is a right-wing militiaman who assassinates a US Senator. But the assassination is shown to be a rather horrid affair: no glorification there. And this right-winger's heroes are all Latin American left wing guerillas. And aside from a bitterness toward the rich and powerful, the hero does not express his views with any degree of coherence, so this is not right wing propaganda.

To find out why this book has caused Ms. Chute to be dropped from the A list, you have to go back to Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic. Underlying the limousine liberal's love affair with the Black Panthers was a certain sense of superiority and contempt for the blacks they pretended to listen to. It was the same reason why Ms. Chute was lionized for her earlier books about the Maine equivalent of Tobacco Road: she was the tour guide who would give them a nice, safe viewing of an inferior culture, rather like the way the aristocracy visited lunatic asylums in the 18th century.

Now Ms. Chute has slipped her traces. The tour guide has joined the toothless outsiders and set fire to the bus. Her hero may be a killer who deserves his fate, but he has manners, grace, authenticity and character. The liberal matron and her consciousness-raised daughter fall into his bed because he has qualities they haven't seen before, certainly not in the worthless men of what passes for an elite in this country these days. And that is what causes the revolt of the book reviewers. Yes many of her characters are empty vessels, plastic men with plastic women. But that is entirely Ms. Chute's point.

The book is a brilliant take on America's class struggle.
If you have any interest in knowing about the currents that roil just below the glassy calm of American life, read this book. Carolyn Chute is a great storyteller and this is a great story, no matter what the barely literate, unconcealably jealous Kirkus reviewer says. The Amazon reviewer has him nailed cold. For that matter, the Kirkus review is exactly what is wrong with the book biz -- anything that gets too powerful, put it down, try to squelch its sales, ignore it. Maybe Amazon.com will change some of that. Hope so.

Another masterpiece.
Carolyn Chute is a true literary master. Her previous novels have consistantly upheld her in the forefront of American writers today. The Kirkus review you just read was probably written by a frustrated novelist who wishes he could write with half of the depth that Chute does. His review is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, and he probably needs to get laid.