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Bunyan and Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny
Additional information
| Author | Mark Cecil |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 26, 2024 |
| Publisher | Pantheon |
| Genre | Adult – Fantasy |
Description
A large-hearted reimagining of beloved all-American legends, this epic debut novel brings men of myth Paul Bunyan and John Henry alive like never before, teaming up for an adventure quest with deeper interrogations of race, class, and industrialization.
Paul Bunyan—legendary larger-than-life American lumberjack—is a man down on his luck. With a load of family debts on his broad back, he ekes out a miserable miner’s life in Lump Town, a bleak hamlet controlled by famed industrialist El Boffo. When Bunyan’s wife Lucette falls ill with a disease caused by the toxic mineral Lump, he embarks on a quest to save her. His only guide: the Chilali—a mysterious creature who speaks only in questions.
Bunyan’s path leads to The Windy City—and to John Henry. Henry is not yet the “steel-drivin’” man known to folklore, but a fugitive on the run from a rigged, racist prison system. As Bunyan and Henry strive to reunite with the families they love, they must work together to solve riddles, forge weapons, brawl with a behemoth, and confront at every turn the relentless, duplicitous El Boffo.
A richly imaginative reinvention of myth, Bunyan and Henry is at once a timeless quest, a fresh origin story, and an urgent modern fable that wrestles with the two sides of the American dream—its wild idealism and cruel underbelly—to inspire the awakening of the folk hero in us all.
About the Author
M
ark Cecil is the host of The Thoughtful Bro show, where he conducts author interviews with an eclectic roster of writers, including Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award and Booker Prize winners, as well as bestsellers and debuts of all stripes, both fiction and non-fiction.
Mark’s debut novel BUNYAN AND HENRY, OR, THE BEAUTIFUL DESTINY is forthcoming in 2024 from Pantheon Books.
Mark is Head of Strategy for literary social media start-up A Mighty Blaze. His author interview work for The Thoughtful Bro has been featured in The Washington Post, The Millions, The Mighty Blaze Podcast and Writer’s Bone. Mark is also a co-founder of Blaze Writers Project, which puts on quirky literary events around Boston.
Mark has taught about creative writing and the publishing industry at Grub Street and The Writers Loft and he is an alum of Jenna Blum’s Master Novel Writing Workshop at Grub Street. Mark studied Fantastic Fiction with Jeanne Cavelos at the Odyssey Writing Workshop and has completed training with the Racial Equity Institute.
Mark’s essays, novel excerpts and reviews have appeared in Embark Literary Journal, The Millions, and Grub Daily. Examples of his book reviews and interviews can be found here, here, here, here and here. In his previous career, Mark spent 10 years as a reporter and editor, mostly for global news agency Reuters News in New York, San Francisco and Boston. Most recently, he was as the General Manager & VP of a boutique media firm in Manhattan.
An avid indoorsman, Mark attended Brown University and University College London and originally hails from the heart of the commonwealth, Worcester, Massachusetts. He is parent to four wise-cracking children (one of them featured below), and has a dope wife.Â
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