Fortunate Son: A Novel

✍ Scribed by Mosley, Walter

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 140 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780759515482

✦ Synopsis

Tommy's nickname is Lucky, but no one would think this crippled boy was blessed. Cursed with health problems and drawn into trouble more often than not, Tommy is the recipient of pity rather than admiration. He is nothing like his stepbrother Eric.

Eric, a Nordic Adonis, is graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune-he is charming, a star athlete, and a magnet for anyone in his sphere. Yet in spite of these differences, Eric and Tommy are as close as two humans can be.

After tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the lives of these boys split. In a powerful story of modern-day resilience and redemption, Tommy and Eric forge their separate ways in the world, each confronting the challenges of his sphere. For Tommy this means dropping out of school, selling drugs, living on the streets, and somehow creating a family of his own. Motherless, African-American, and impoverished, Tommy has nothing but feels lucky every day of his life. For Eric, the golden youth, life means athletics, sexual attraction, excellent grades, prosperity, and the uncertainty that comes with prizes won too easily. Given everything, he trusts nothing.

Eric and Tommy's parallel lives are an astonishing story of self-determination and the true measure of fortune. The ties that bind this Adonis and his sickly counterpart, however, are thicker than blood, and when circumstances reunite Eric and Tommy after years apart, their distinct approaches to life may be the only thing that can save them from forces that threaten to destroy them for good.

Written with unique insight into the hidden currents and deeper realities of modern life, Fortunate Son is a tour de force by the author the Boston Globe calls "one of this nation's finest writers."

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Toussaint's honeyed voice, flecked with the slightest undertone of grit, is lovely but forbidding, the sound of effortless social grace underscored by the threat of steely authority at the slightest provocation. Sounding much like actress Alfre Woodard, Toussaint reads Mosley's novel of two stepbrothers, brought together as part of an unlikely family yet separated by wildly divergent fortunes. Tommy and Eric, joined by their respective parents' meeting at Tommy's hospital bed, are inseparable as boys, but their differing natures and fates tear them apart as they grow older. Toussaint's performance is flawless, superbly mimicking the vocal patterns of characters both large and small, varying the texture of her reading by altering speed, style and vocal depth to provide Mosley's book with texture and subtle power. She is the rare reader who allows the words of her text to dictate the tone of her reading, rather than imposing a vocal style on the book; as a result, her reading is more pleasurable than run-of-the-mill audiobooks, staying true to the spirit of Mosley's tart, occasionally sentimental prose with admirable tenacity.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries series, tackles a new genre with almost every novel. Like some of his previous work, Fortunate Son explores America's racial divide, but it does so in a fairy tale or parable about race, fate, luck, love, and redemption. Critics generally agree that Mosley succeeds in this genre; darkness, concise writing, compassion, social criticism, and questions about which son is "fortunate" resound loudly. Only the New York Times faulted Mosley for his stereotypical characters, predictability, and lack of tension. In the end, Fortunate Son may or may not live up to Easy Rawlins, but it remains a strong tale about love transcending all boundaries.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.