1994 "Merry Men" by Carolyn Chute - first edition

A first edition of 695 pages, all clean and securely bound to the cover. Shown in the dustcover, it could almost pass for brand new!

The storyline follows:

In her third novel, Chute unfolds the further exploits of the country folk of Egypt, Maine. Who is stealing from the few well-off people of Egypt, Maine, and leaving behind coffins containing life-sized, look-alike dummies? Is it the same person who leaves jars of money on the doorsteps of the needy? To answer these questions, and to develop her Robin Hood metaphor, Chute gives us a graphic look into the lives of several generations of Egypt's working-class clans. Seeming at first like a loose collection of disjointed tales, a portrait gallery of rural grotesques, the novel gains unity as its theme of exploitation becomes more apparent and its two central stories--a teenage girl's attempt to organize the townswomen to protest hunting and a road commissioner's maneuver to control his men by firing them and hiring them back for lower wages--begin to interconnect and reflect off one another. Chute's politics get a little too preachy near the end, but her people and their universal plight linger in the memory.

Detailed item info