The Book of Mamie - Softcover

In addition to The Book of Mamie, which won the AWP Award for Best Novel in 1988, Duff Brenna has published four other novels: The Holy Book of the Beard (Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1996), Too Cool, a New York Times Noteworthy Book (Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1998, Plume 2000), The Altar of the Body, (St. Martin's, 2001) and The Willow Man (Wynkin de Worde of Ireland, 2005). The Book of Mamie went out of print after selling out two hardbound editions from the University of Iowa Press. A Minnesota native and onetime Wisconsin dairy farmer, Duff Brenna is now a freelance writer and Professor Emeritus of English literature and creative writing at California State University, San Marcos.

Set in northern Wisconsin, this picaresque yarn has the exuberance and broad humor of a folk tale. Mentally handicapped Mamie Beaver, sexually and physically abused by her farmer father, runs away with teenage farmboy Christian Foggy, the novel's narrator. Their developing romance is handled sensitively. On the road, the duo meet impresario Don Shepard, apostle of a secular religion of art, who lures Mamie away from Christian and features her as "phenomenon extraordinaire" in his Artlife theater, where she does halting imitations of Ophelia. At the opposite pole from Shepard is Robbie Peevy, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who incites crowds to burn books. Other eccentric characters--a crackerbarrel philosopher, a sadistic game hunter, a Valkyrian "pixie harridan"--expose Christian to the vicissitudes of life. Then first novelist Brenna ushers in a tragedy that facilitates self-understanding.
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