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. When we first meet Paul Bunyan--legendary larger-than-life lumberjack and classic figure from American mythology--he is still just a man, and one down on his luck. With a load of family debts on his broad back, Bunyan is eking out a miserable miner's life in the bleak hamlet of Lump Town, a perpetually grey walled city controlled by famed industrialist El Boffo (author of the bestselling book,
Awaken the Capitalist Within!). When Bunyan's beloved wife Lucette falls gravely ill with a disease caused by the mysterious mineral Lump, he sets off on a quest to save her, aided only by a mythical creature known as the Chilali, who commands that Bunyan follow the Twisty Path to meet his destiny.
That path leads to The Windy City--and to John Henry. Like Bunyan, Henry is not yet the "steel-driving" hammer man who raced the steam drill and won. Instead, we find him on the run from the chain gang in which he was falsely imprisoned. In order to escape to freedom with his genius wife Polly and brilliant young son, Henry and Bunyan are going to have to work together. As an unlikely team, these massive mythic men must solve riddles, forge weapons, plumb labyrinths, brawl with behemoths, and do battle with the bombastic El Boffo, on a journey that will not only make them into the men they are meant to be, but reshape the landscape of their country forever.
A richly imaginative reinvention of myth,
Paul Bunyan and the Beautiful Destiny is both an old-fashioned American yarn and a clever modern fable that wrestles with reconciling both the wild idealism and dark underbelly of the American dream.
