Postcards

Postcards
Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx’s first novel, which received huge acclaim and launched an outstanding literary career.‘Postcards’ is the story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home – not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences…

ANNIE PROULX

Postcards

Copyright (#ulink_3a7b46b4-21d1-51f4-9644-c9783d1f64b8)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in paperback in 1994 by Fourth Estate and by

Harper Perennial in 2006, reprinted 7 times.

First published in Great Britain in 1993 by Fourth Estate

Copyright © Dead Line, Ltd. 1992

Annie Proulx asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9781841155012

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007385553

Version: 2018-05-23

Praise for Postcards: (#ulink_7a0edc49-1e1b-5f7c-a0e5-b29585ca34a8)

‘Annie Proulx has come close to writing “The Great American Novel”’

New York Times

‘Postcards feels like a fifth or sixth novel, not a first. Language that sizzles like meat in a pan … A wonderful writer and an astonishingly accomplished novel’

Chicago Tribune

‘Her first novel fulfils the promise of her short stories … hugely ambitious … The natural description is superb. The dialogue has a raspy bony twang to it. She pushes language to breaking point … a gifted prose stylist who renders her characters on the page to mesmerizing effect’

San Francisco Chronicle

‘The author’s literary ancestors range from Edith Wharton to Nathaniel West. But Proulx sees the grand side too … She sees every part of the national configuration and wraps every character here in a crazy-quilt of literary affection’

Los Angeles Times

‘Postcards triumphantly delivers. You could use the word “great” about Postcards without embarassing yourself’

Boston Globe

‘Rich, boisterous, remarkable … Annie Proulx draws characters who matter’

Washington Times

For Roberta

Contents

Cover (#u74dab51a-1ab5-5679-8325-10235e4f513d)

Title Page (#u6e08e6ff-76c2-5896-99c5-0515564181b3)

Copyright (#uccb0a2ff-8aea-5ce7-b813-943f97de3240)

Praise for Postcards (#ub12c6be3-8999-5750-be51-f96860ff69da)

Preface (#ud44b9d8f-5b43-57ea-ad05-fe5fa37efc82)

I (#u39d4d77e-88ba-5021-9bb0-19aad745246c)

1 Blood (#u07717086-1480-58dc-8730-bfee205b4fb4)

2 Mink’s Revenge (#u256c07be-9492-5f75-958f-de8948d1e6e4)

3 Down the Road (#uf05de211-a788-5b42-82a1-216508e583fb)

4 What I See (#ua587f401-d598-5d11-8d20-09cee8ac08d0)

5 A Short, Sharp Shock (#u8c438746-c3a7-5bdd-9a5d-83297d2d886a)

6 The Violet Shoe in the Ditch (#u3bc85777-18f9-5f67-ad6d-f2bfa77dee6f)

7 When Your Hand Is Cut Off (#u084d0c37-c313-5453-9831-101e93a80ed7)

8 The Bat in the Wet Grass (#uc2540840-2ae2-5334-98bd-936c567eb74f)

9 What I See (#u4044af62-c688-55ef-b0c3-18902350b765)