On the Edge of Nineveh

Vietnam and shocks of the day commanded the headlines for a decade from the mid-sixties into the seventies. A few other things were going on as well; tectonic shifts of the American Landscape rumbled below. The characters in Nineveh find themselves neck deep in a whole lot of other. Set principally in the summers of ‘69 -‘71, with an epilogue set an indeterminate time after the conclusion of the main story, Nineveh portends the future by bringing the past back for a visit. Stylistically, the novel presents as late 20th Century American hewing to traditional conventions of structure. Dialogue is the preferred medium for bringing the characters and story to the reader. A large Nineteenth Century summer house on fictional Lake Nineveh is the principal setting, and the bucolic resort hamlets and one-factory towns are about to be subsumed by the wave of development bearing down on their way of life. Locals deliver large characters brimming with personality but disgruntled as thoroughly modern Babbits invade the environs. As new pharmacies of fun sprang up, those so inclined seized the moment. Erik Frinjuhr’s group of hale fellows better not met incline and indulge. Romps and parties and the emergent recreational drug market before Big Brother had lightened up are captured in sense-around prose and dialogue inviting vicarious participation. As usual, the young women are a step ahead in gaming the changing rules of the war of the sexes. Their varying strategic approaches to achieving romantic goals unfold with Machiavellian charm and weaponized caresses. Written in 1982 on a manual Smith Corona typewriter, the substance of the original manuscript has been maintained through periodic edits, the last of which brought the novel to publication in its present form. The author’s early childhood was spent in Minneapolis. He moved with his family to Lake Minnetonka west of the Twin Cities in the ‘60’s. The author attended and graduated from the public schools of Mound, Minnesota, and is a graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, and the University of Minnesota Law School. He resides in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.