{ "item_title" : "The Promise of Elsewhere", "item_author" : [" Brad Leithauser "], "item_description" : "From the widely acclaimed poet and novelist: a comic novel whose hero, Louie Hake--his Midwestern soul in crisis--tries to prop up his failing prospects of happiness by setting out abroad on what he calls his Journey of a Lifetime. Louie is 43. He teaches architecture at a third-rate college in Michigan. His second marriage is collapsing and he's facing a potentially disastrous medical diagnosis. What to do? Take off on a high-minded tour of the world's most spectacular architecture sites. But after his first stop, Rome, he gets waylaid--ludicrously, spectacularly so. He never reaches most of his destinations. Yearning for his mother tongue, he detours to London, where he makes a stab at romance with a jilted bride. Then, following the summer light he winds up in the high Arctic, where the turf houses and corrugated aluminum sheds don't amount to much of an architectural tradition. But it turns out that there's another sort of architecture here: icebergs the size of cathedrals, bobbing beside a strange and wondrous landscape. Furthermore it soon grows clear that Louie's Grand Journey is less about where he is than where he's been in his much-bungled romantic past. Whether pursuing by email his estranged current wife (cohabiting with Satan in the Virgin Islands), or his first wife (newly engaged to someone else), or an older woman he kissed once a quarter-century ago, Louie reveals himself to be a wonderfully ridiculous and endearing, deeply touching guide through the trials of a man whose life may never go just quite right.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/52/565/503/0525655034_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "27.95", "online_price" : "27.95", "our_price" : "27.95", "club_price" : "27.95", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

Overview

Customers Also Bought

Details