7.6 /10 1 Votes
Language English Pages 418 pp Dewey Decimal 813/.54 21 Publisher Vintage Books OCLC 46946938 | 3.8/5 Goodreads Publication date 1986 ISBN 0-394-74409-8 Originally published 1986 Genre Novel Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Similar The Risk Pool, Bridge of Sighs, Straight Man, Elsewhere: A Memoir, Nobody's fool | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Published in 1986, Mohawk is the debut novel by American author Richard Russo - who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Contents
Plot introduction
Set in Mohawk, an upstate New York mill town in decline along with its leather tanning industry. The novel is centered on the Mohawk Grill, a diner run by Harry Saunders and charts the lives two intersecting families, the Grouses and the Gaffneys. Anne Grouse is the 40-year-old daughter of Mather Grouse and lives with her parents and son Randall after her divorce from Dallas Younger her high-school sweetheart, a good-hearted but unreliable auto-mechanic. Anne is in love with her cousin Diana's husband Dan who is paralysed after a car accident. The relationship between Mather and fellow leather-worker Rory Gaffney provides suspense to the story and Randall befriends Rory's mentally disabled son Bill, who is in love with Mather's daughter Anne. Following Mather's death, Randall returns to Mohawk having dropped out of college to avoid the draft and meets Rory's granddaughter B.G who falls in love with him. The story climaxes with Randall being accused of murder as three Gaffneys lay dead.