Promised Land (Signed Slipcase) by Jack Dann

FIRST EDITION - GOOD CONDITION

A COLLECTION by Jack Dann
CATEGORY Alternative Reality Fantasy
PUBLICATION DATE: May 2012
INTRODUCTION Kim Stanley Robinson
COVER ART Vincent Chong

EDITION

Slipcased Hardcover signed by the author & Kim Stanley Robinson limited to 100 numbered copies

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Promised Land, Jack Dann returns to the alternate America of his acclaimed 2004 novel The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean. In that book, Dean, the most promising actor of his time, survived his car crash in 1955, & lived on, making great movies & interacting with some of the foremost personalities of the Fifties & Sixties while drifting towards a strange political destiny in lockstep with Robert Kennedy. Now, Promised Land expands on that premise, offering brilliant insights into Dean, the Kennedys, & others, both as they were & as they might have been.

In this volumes dexterously interlinked stories & novellas, we come to understand Marilyn Monroe more vividly than ever beforeher inner conicts, her indecision between lovers & lifestyles, between life & death. We witness the evolution of Elvis Presley from a home-grown Memphis boy to a jaded superstar, the deaths of those closest to him fuelling his alienation from his better nature. We glimpse the paradoxical moral constitution of Bobby Kennedy, crusading idealist yet capable of deep cynicism & indelity. We come to know the wheedling eloquence of Jack Kerouac, & the bizarre psychology of William Burroughs. & connecting them all, in chains of passionate friendship & enigmatic karmic sympathy, is the gure of Jimmy Dean, who believes his second chance at existence is a trust from God, but who struggles to uncover what exactly that means...

Promised Land is a superb meditation on fame, love, & fate, replete with evocative dialogue, rich characterization, & dazzling prose poetry. It is the story collection of the year.