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Over the Line
David Lloyd
Paper $19.95
| 978-0-8156-1022-9
| 2013
ebook 978-0-8156-5230-4
"Over the Line is a spare and magnificent novel, humorous and heartbreaking to the end. Drawing on his native Central New York with an eye as keen as William Kennedy’s or Richard Russo’s, David Lloyd gives us a timely character in the person of Justin Lyle, who is being raised in the economic and moral crucible of small town America. Yet, the story is as classic as it is contemporary, for what emerges is a boy’s coming of age and his realization that morality means nothing outside of the embrace of ambiguity."—Andrew Krivak, author of The Sojourn
David Lloyd discusses Over the Line on Bridge Street
"A brilliant debut novel centering on Justin, whose generation finds itself overwhelmed by the moral chaos of a society on a downward spiral. . . . Over the Line is resonant with meaning and a page turner as well."—Joan Mellen, author of Our Man in Haiti: George de Mohrenschildt and the CIA in the Nightmare Republic
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David Lloyd is professor of English and director of the Creative
Writing Program at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York. He
is the author of Boys: Stories and a Novella and three books
of poetry, The Everyday Apocalypse, The Gospel According to
Frank, and Warriors.
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Fifteen-year-old Justin Lyle does not see in himself the qualities he admires
in heroes like his paternal grandfather, awarded a medal of honor during
World War II, or in the fictional heroes of television and comic books.
Growing up in the declining manufacturing town of East Liberty, New
York—beset by unemployment, rising crime, and an influx of drugs, and
encircled by struggling dairy farms—Justin feels isolated and decidedly
unheroic. These feelings are intensified by his parents’ divorce, his longing
for an unattainable girl, and the death, eight years previous but still
a potent memory, of his infant brother. When Justin steps "over the line"
one afternoon, attempting to help the drug-addled girlfriend of an unstable
bully, he triggers a series of increasingly perilous encounters. By week’s
end, Justin has been drawn into his community’s sinister underworld and
compelled to unexpected action and a fresh understanding of the complexities
of heroism.
The author of Boys: Stories and a Novella, Lloyd again illustrates his
pitch-perfect ear for capturing the detached vernacular and emotional
angst of adolescence. Lloyd brings to life the trials of a small, Upstate New
York town, creating a story that is as real as it is fictional.
View other literature books from New York State
5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 168 pages
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