In America

If the words "first novel" and "arrival of a major American talent" appear on the front flap of a dust jacket, you can almost be sure that the picture on the back flap will depict some impossibly lovely product of good breeding and expert dentistry, a sloe-eyed or square-jawed recent graduate of one of the top-tier creative writing programs, with a face made up to hide the blemishes of acne scars not too distantly inflicted. Big-time publishing is now as enamored of youth as every other aspect of the culture, and aspiring writers seem to be losing their virginity at ever younger ages to an industry that came rather late to the realization that sex can sell mediocre books as well as it sells anything else.

It's something of a surprise, then, to come upon two first novels written by balding guys in their 50s. In addition to this superficial similarity, both books explore the dislocations forced on families touched by tragedy during the Great Depression. Though neither Waterborne nor The Vanishing Moon is without flaws, each is an ambitious effort that heralds the arrival of an intriguing pentagenarian talent.

In Waterborne, Bruce Murkoff steers four characters toward a fateful meeting at the Boulder Dam--later renamed for President Hoover--during its epic building in the 1930s. The first half of the book gives us these characters' histories in alternating strands of flashback; the second half vividly evokes the construction of the dam near the anomalous oasis of Las Vegas, a newborn city flush with vice and cash at a time when the rest of the country is mired in dust and degradation.

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