07/25/2016
This historical fiction debut is a quiet, sweeping story about the life of mythic frontiersman Daniel Boone. Told entirely from the perspective of Boone himself, the book meanders through his early childhood, sharing formative moments such as his joy for the first gun he owned and his brother Isaiah teaching him to hunt, and his family's exile from their religious community in Exeter, N.H. From there, the reader follows Boone on his peripatetic adventures as he pushes westward, searching for paradise. Though Boone does marry and start a family, he can't be tied down and has a constant itch to carry on his search for heaven on earth. Adventure is both wondrous and tragic for Boone, who sees his first herd of buffalo and traverses the beautiful, untouched land of Kentucky but also has multiple run-ins with the Shawnee and grieves the deaths of loved ones. The narrative is carried by the strong, poetic voice, which at times is as hard to pin down as the man himself. Boone's ghosts—of both people and places—follow and haunt him despite his attempts to shake them off through almost constant exploration into the unknown. Hawley's marvelous book shines light on a figure that has become more legend than man, sharing an intimate and raw portrayal of Boone that rings true. Agent: Denise Bukowski, Bukowski Agency. (Aug.)
2016-05-17
A thoroughly researched historical novel reimagines the life of 18th-century frontiersman Daniel Boone, transforming him into a brooding observer of the fall of a country he'd like to consider Paradise.The first novel by short story writer Hawley (The Old Familiar, 2008) uses as a framework what is known of Boone's life, beginning with his impoverished childhood in a Quaker community in Pennsylvania and ending, rather abruptly, as the Indians who have either, depending on one's perspective, captured or adopted him prepare to attack the fort Boone and others have built in Kentucky. (A sequel is evidently in the works.) In between, Boone witnesses—and causes—many a death, marries, fathers a bunch of children, moves his family several times, sets off on hunts that last months or years, is captured by Indians, escapes, and is captured again. The close adherence to chronology makes for an episodic novel in which the only consistent character is Boone himself. The frontiersman tells his story, presumably from the point of view of old age but in the present tense. The world he describes, full of squalor and natural beauty and blood, is richly detailed, and the dialogue sharp and well-trimmed. Boone himself, however, often seems more literary device than believable character. Depressive and romantic, he is continually haunted by an increasingly crowded swarm of ghosts, beginning with the brother who died when Boone was an adolescent and the horse he had to kill when it broke its leg. While not much is known of Boone's inner life, since he left few written records, his actions don't necessarily jibe with the introspective, language-besotted dreamer Hawley creates, the one who often feels that he is living in "a long half-dream."The novel sets out to take Daniel Boone from myth to man—but in the process, it transplants him into another sort of literary myth.
WINNER 2015 – Amazon.ca First Novel Award
LONGLISTED 2015 – Scotiabank Giller Prize
“Alix Hawley has written a boldly original, mysterious, and provocative novel—the demythologizing of an American icon and his reinvention as a figure of poetic luminosity. She is Cormac McCarthy’s young heiress, with a light and forgiving heart.” —Joyce Carol Oates
“An extraordinary feat of backwoods ventriloquism, carried off with great flair and conviction, across the boundaries of custom, time and gender. Alix Hawley invests afresh in the voice of Daniel Boone and his tough familiars, bringing shock and sensuality, but also surprising tenderness, to the famously rugged frontier myth.”
—Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder
“Alix Hawley’s resurrection of the great woodsman, Daniel Boone, is astonishingly, uncannily vivid. Lightly stitched to the sparse historical record, this is not a picture of the frontier itself so much as the restless spirits of exploration, love, memory, and greed that drove Boone—‘the white Indian’—west through the wilderness. His voice cracks like a musket shot across these pages—brave, confused, and yearning—and Hawley’s close, dream-like perspective lends a hallucinatory aspect to her prose, as if we are looking out Boone’s eyes at those lost landscapes and faces. An amazing debut.”
—Regina Marler
“I fell in love with Alix Hawley’s Daniel Boone, a man drawn to the beating heart of the wild landscape that stretches beyond his known world, and who risks recklessly to preserve his freedom.”
—Frances Greenslade, author of Shelter
“All True Not a Lie in It moves with surety and grace through legends and landscapes trod by more than a few major artists. Watching Alix Hawley negotiate this challenging terrain, via Daniel Boone, of all American stories, is a serious literary thrill. An audacious debut.”
—Charles Foran, author of Mordecai: The Life
“Alix Hawley has really done a number on an American folk hero. With vivid imagery and a strong, dreamlike voice, she confidently strips away the myth of Daniel Boone to reveal the strange, pulsing man underneath. It is a remarkable feat and a remarkable book.”
—Tracy Chevalier, author of The Last Runaway and Girl with a Pearl Earring
“Alix Hawley’s debut novel is audacious and bold, like an early Ondaatje, with writing that is luscious, lyrical, and bloodthirsty. Like Hawley’s narrator, Daniel Boone, All True Not a Lie In It constantly seeks out new ground, wrapping the reader in a landscape of language and dream.”
—Alexi Zentner, author of The Lobster Kings and Touch
