Purple America A Novel

Purple America begins in a bathtub and ends in Long Island Sound. Inbetween, Rick Moody's latest novel explores the landscape of a family in crisis. Dexter(Hex) Raitliffe, a freelance publicist, returns home to care for his mother, Billie, who isdying by inches of a neurological disease that will rob her of motion, of speech, andfinally of thought. Billie's second husband has left her--a fact that Hex is unaware of untilhe comes home--and her only hope for assisted suicide lies in her son. Unfortunately,Hex is barely able to conduct his own life, much less take his mother's. PurpleAmerica takes place over the course of a single night; in that night,Hex gives hismother a bath, reconnects with an old love, gets drunk, and goes after his stepfather toconfront him, with tragic results. As Moody weaves his tale of this fateful Friday evening, he juxtaposes themes of aging,obsolescence, and physical decline with an accident at the nuclear power plant where hisstepfather works. What lifts this novel above its rather depressing subject matter isMoody's unsentimental storytelling and the soaring language with which he gives hischaracters voice. Purple America is by turns lyrical,tragic, ferocious, and funny,and Rick Moody is a writer with a brilliant future ahead of him.