Product Description

Deirdre McNamer has won praise for the intelligence, beauty, precision, and breadth of her fiction. This beautifully crafted, far-ranging novel of idealism laid waste and the haunting, redemptive bonds of friendship tells the story of three Montana men—brothers Aidan and Neil Tierney, and their friend Roland Taliaferro—who get swept up in the machinations of World War II and its fateful aftermath. After the war, Aidan returns to Montana ill and emotionally shattered from the war, and on a cold December day in 1946 is found fatally shot, an apparent suicide. Only when Neil and Roland are very old men does Aidan’s death become illuminated, amplified, and finally put to rest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #904017 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Released on: 2007-08-02
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. McNamer (My Russian; One Sweet Quarrel) returns with a haunting novel of love, friendship and faith set in a world where none of those values triumphs. Brothers Neil and Aidan Tierney grow up on the prairies of pre–WWII Montana, and after Pearl Harbor Neil becomes a B-29 pilot in the Pacific, and Aidan joins the FBI and is assigned to covert duty in Argentina. Upon their return in 1946, Neil establishes a life, but Aiden is dying of a mysterious disease and embittered by what he saw and did during the war. His threats to go public with bureau business call back to his life Roland Taliaferro, also an FBI agent, whose alcoholism has put his career on the rocks. In short order, Aiden is found dead, an apparent suicide by shotgun. Neil suspects a coverup, but he has no way of disproving the official report. McNamer gradually reveals the truth of the matter, drawing in characters whose connections initially appear ancillary. McNamer's insight into her damaged cast generates a deep emotional response that builds toward a reunion and revelation that bring satisfaction, if not peace. (Aug.)
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From Booklist
As boys, brothers Aidan and Neil Tierney ride the Montana prairie on horseback, yearning for adventure. As men, they find it: Neil pilots a B-29 over Japan, while Aidan hunts Nazis in Argentina for the FBI. But although they both return from the war, Aidan proves a casualty nonetheless. Sickened by a mysterious ailment, suffering almost more from disillusionment, he won't survive 1946. Spanning the years 1927 through 2003 and employing richly layered, interlocking points of view, McNamer teases out the surprising truth behind Aidan's death, portraying an era of idealism and of myopia and paranoia. If the high plains and deep valleys of Montana seem an unlikely place to play out the cynical spy hunting of the J. Edgar Hoover era, modern-day echoes—allegations of profiteering in Iraq—remind us that no place on earth is too remote to be touched by the prevailing winds. This loses a bit of pace in the middle, but the powerful ending rewards the time spent getting there. Elegant and assured, with a joy in language that shows on every page. Graff, Keir

Review
Red Rover by Deirdre McNamer is a rare and considerable achievement, stunning actually. This is a truly impressive novel. She is a master weaver of prose. -- Jim Harrison

Red Rover is wonderful for the tenderness and clear-eyed emotional intelligence with which it renders the heartbreak of beautiful young lives wrecked by the great grinding machinery of governments going about their business. And its's equally moving on the quiet heroism and solace of the ongoing repair work that has to follow such destruction. This is a book filled with the most perceptive kind of love for its characters, and sorrow for what they have to endure. -- Jim Shepard

Red Rover possesses such range and immediacy that I wondered how in a novel this length McNamer managed to have them both without sacrificing the very moving and humane story she tells. Amazingly, not a stitch is dropped in this remarkable book. -- Thomas McGuane

An engaging and propulsive read that stirs profound emotions. -- Alice Munro

Coincidence, valor, betrayal, fate and some dark fuel that burns beyond acceptance or forgiveness are the generative forces of Red Rover...a harshly lovely lonely story played out against Montana's harshly lovely lonely land. -- Joy Williams

Ms. McNamer's novel is vividly observed and original [actually entirely engrossing] in its conception. She's a wonderfully smart and surprising sentence-writer, and the burnish on this work has left not a word out of place. This is 'the novel as story-telling.' And it is of a very high order. -- Richard Ford

Customer Reviews

One of the best historical tales of the year
Brothers Aiden and Neil Tierney grew up as best friends riding horses in Big Sky Country. After Pearl Harbor brought the United States in to the war, they both left Montana to volunteer to help their country. Aiden became an undercover FBI agent working to out Nazis setting up a beachhead in Argentina; while Neil joins the Air Force. Both survived their WWII endeavors.

Aiden and Neil return to Montana following the V-J Day armistice that ended the hostilities. However, instead of rejoicing in their safe return, Aiden is extremely ill and unable to even mount a horse. During Christmas 1946, the local coroner determines he committed suicide. Neil rejects the official ruling as he knows his sibling was a fighter and was battling the crippling disease. After the funeral, Aiden's friend FBI agent Roland Taliaferro insists Hoover will soon tell them the truth. However, the letter from the "the Old Man" director never comes and Taliaferro is retired. Over the six decades, Neil longs to know what happened to Aiden, but it takes cataract surgery to provide him the truth.

One of the best historical tales of the year, RED ROVER starts with Lindbergh in 1927, goes through WW II and its immediate aftermath, and finally winds down in the twenty-first century. The story line easily makes the quantum leaps seem natural mostly because the two siblings seem real in every era they appear. Readers will appreciate this strong vivid look at much of the American century (and a bit more) while wondering like Neil what truly happened to Aiden as every conspiratorial theory will cross your mind until the closure provided with an incredible climax.

Harriet Klausner

Deeply moving, quietly original
I purchased this book because I am interested in Montana, but it turned out to be much more than "a Montana novel." It's an unusual mystery story, a meditation on memory, a book about what is hidden from sight in even the most familiar surroundings. The further I read, the more deeply absorbed I became, as the book shifted points of view and time frames, and each character filled in pieces that were left out from other character's accounts. I have rarely read such an unusual combination of fine, traditional storytelling and complex thinking about "the truth." It is very beautifully written, and it haunts me.

A book to get lost in . . .
The end-flap of the dust jacket on this book relates a storyline extracted from it that sounds straightforward enough, but McNamer has written something far more complex and fascinating. She tells a story with a beginning, middle and an end, but not at all in that order. While the narrative is set almost entirely in Montana, timelines jump back and forth between 1927, 1939, 1944-46, and 2003. There's an extensive catalog of characters who get their time on center stage, their stories sometimes overlapping with others. Meanwhile, the supposed central characters disappear for long periods of time and we learn about them only indirectly.

Sounds maybe complicated, but I found the novel absorbing from beginning to end. Part of that owes to the subject matter. Two G-men employed by J. Edgar Hoover's wartime FBI start out as friends, and then something happens that sets them at odds. A young brother outlives his older brother by more than 50 years, but memory continues to bind them together. And in what seems to be a random universe, where people live and then die as if life itself were a plague, there are chance parallels like a B-29 running out of fuel as it returns from a bombing mission to Tokyo and a car running out of gas in a Montana snowstorm. Much of what makes the novel absorbing owes to McNamer's wonderful way with language, which is often poetic and haunting in its use of metaphor to capture nuances of emotion, attitude, and physical sensation. It's not a book you speed read. It's meant to be savored and puzzled over at a more leisurely pace. It's a book to get lost in; I heartily recommend it.