Early Warning

Frank did not haunt Front Street and Maiden Lane; he circled it, wending here and there, his eye always peeled. He had the time he d given up the whoring and the flying and practically everything else. He told Andy that he had taken up golf, and was planning to join a country club but hadn t decided which one, so he was visiting all of them. He even bought a set of clubs and kept them in the trunk of his Chrysler. But he didn t drive the Chrysler anywhere near the Knickerbocker. He zipped over the GW Bridge, down the West Side Highway, then left on Canal Street. Then he parked in a lot near China-town, and started walking. Sometimes he walked first toward the river and then south (southwest his inner compass was still accurate). Other times, he walked down Pearl Street or Gold Street, scanning the passing women.

He saw her twice in the first week in March. Both times, she was wearing the black coat. He followed her at a distance, taking note not only of where she went and which buildings she frequented, but also of whom she spoke to, whether any men walked along with her or picked her up (they did not), and whom she greeted. The first afternoon, he followed her for an hour and never got closer than half a block. The second time, she went into that same brick building after thirty seven minutes. He needed a plan.

Events at the office interfered for a while. Friskie got drunk and slapped the Sulzberger cousin in the street outside the Waldorf after a dance it got into the papers; the girl broke the engagement; Dave Courtland said high time, she was a Jew; and Frank had to fly down to Galveston and talk not only to Dave, but to the wife, Anna. It took seventeen days to work out a reconciliation, and the Sulzberger parents were not happy, but, on the other hand, they had not heard the Jew comment, and Friskie was a very, very handsome young man. Then the head of the Venezuela office, Jesús De La Garza, came for a visit, and he was in New York for seven days and

JANE SMILEY is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Some Luck, the first volume of The Last Hundred Years trilogy, long-listed for the National Book Award. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.

One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle

Wondrous. . . . Mesmerizing. . . . Develops lives that are rich, mysterious and constantly changing. The Washington Post

Dickensian in its breadth and detail. . . . Smiley is simply brilliant. Minneapolis Star Tribune

Heartbreaking. . . . Expansive yet intimate. The New York Times Book Review

Superb. . . . [A] king-size American quilt of a novel. The New Yorker

Wonderful. . . . Smiley poses large questions and offers powerful insights. San Francisco Chronicle

Recalls Balzac s Human Comedy, John Dos Passos U.S.A. trilogy and John Updike s Rabbit quartet. . . . Leave[s] us looking forward to the finale of this epic endeavor. NPR

Smiley s brilliance is twofold. In telling the story of an American family, she unfurls the troubled trajectory of twentieth-century America. USA Today

  Eloquent and poignant. . . . Smiley s deft narrative hopping is as impressive as ever. Entertainment Weekly

The second installment of Smiley s Last Hundred Years trilogy follows the next generation of Langdons across a mid-twentieth century American panorama, evoking with perceptiveness and sweep the social revolutions that realign their fates. Vogue

Engrossing. . . . Smiley captures the great heartland diaspora of the twentieth century. . . . Demonstrates what a novel, unique among all art forms, can do. The Dallas Morning News

Phenomenally powerful. . . . What Smiley feels most like here, for her faultless skill in bringing a wide cast so vividly into being that we would know them anywhere, for the remarkable intensity of her feeling for territory and landscape and her combination of impatient intellect, emotional perspicacity and unfailing humanity, is America s Tolstoy. The Guardian (London)

The real magic of this novel is that which makes every Jane Smiley book a work of art, recognizably hers: the writing, the writing, the writing. Los Angeles Review of Books