Babylon Rolling

New York: Pantheon, 2008. First edition. Hardcover. Near fine. 301pp. 24.5 cm. Black over yellow boards. First edition, first printing. NF dustjacket with "Autographed Copy" sticker on front cover. SIGNED by author on the title page. "A family from Minneapolis relocates to New Orleans one year before Katrina and settles on Orchard Street, partly because it offers a rich human gumbo of whites, blacks, Asians, and Tulane students. The family members want to revel in the diversity, but they also recoil at some of the differences they encounter. At the same time, the marital stresses between husband and wife are deepening. Babylon Rolling is a chronicle of life on Orchard Street during that year before disaster. It is an engaging and keenly observant book, a kind of literary block party in which the residents of Orchard Street come to life. Whether Boyden's focus is on a black teenager who embarks on a career in the drug trade by dubbing himself Fearius, or on the Minnesota transplants' reactions to their new home, or on the fierce heat and humidity, or the wondrous smells that waft from kitchens, or racial tensions, there is an honesty and bedrock reality to this novel that is never less than compelling." -- Thomas Gaughan.