Lem Purchase is in California when a call comes in the dead of night: his younger, disturbed brother in Nebraska announces his plans to carry out an act of terrorism targeting the state capitol building in Lincoln. This isn't the first time Lem has had to make a frantic check on Jackson. Nor is it the first time that author Robert Vivian has taken us to the haunted world of the Great Plains. Critics called Vivian's first two books in the Tall Grass Trilogy "lyrical and harrowing" (Sven Birkerts on The Mover of Bones) and "brilliantly written" (Publishers Weekly on Lamb Bright Saviors). In this third and final volume in the trilogy, Vivian weaves the voices of Lem, Jackson, and Lem's estranged wife, Lissa, into an American triptych of longing, remembrance, and innocence-of hopes almost fulfilled and inevitably disappointed-as we race to Jackson's reckoning with history that must have its day. While Jackson hatches yet another plan that rivals the first in madness and ultimately threatens Lem's life, Lem's reflections reveal what, and how much, that life has meant. In Jackson's determination we encounter another view of what matters, as he clings to his apocalyptic notion of the only way in which the country can be reclaimed from its present madness.
Robert Vivian is a professor of English and creative writing at Alma College in Michigan. He is the author of The Mover of Bones and Lamb Bright Saviors in the Tall Grass Trilogy, as well as the award-winning Cold Snap as Yearning, all available from the University of Nebraska Press.
Redux and Recoil Jackson Lem Lissa Jackson Lem Lissa Jackson Lem Lissa Jackson Lem Lissa Jackson Reckoning Lem Lissa Revelation
The story of the Purchase brothers, and Lem Purchase's final effort to save his brother Jackson from himself.
"Vivian finds impressive depth in a slim and spare endeavor." - Publishers Weekly "Another Burning Kingdom entwines a set of perspectives on the prospects of future happiness - both personal and national. It simmers its way to a boil as Lem drives from California to his brother's prairie home to play an unwitting part in Jackson's drama while Lissa wrestles with her betrayal. Vivian writes beautifully, and his characters draw you into their dreams." - Tom Zelman, Star Tribune "Another Burning Kingdom is an excellent read that shouldn't be overlooked." - Midwest Book Review "The three haunted voices of Robert Vivian's Another Burning Kingdom tell individual tales of interweaving fates that also etch a portrait of America's forgotten ones. Vivian's visionary trilogy of novels is brought to stunning conclusion here, capping an original achievement in American fiction, offering both apocalyptic revelation and possible redemption." - Philip Graham, author of How to Read an Unwritten Language "Vivian writes in the Southern Gothic tradition, though his fiction is set in Nebraska and the West... Violence and the rural are important to this story, as is letting the dispossessed speak for themselves. The rural subjectivity expressed in Another Burning Kingdom is horrific and beautiful." - Aaron Gwyn, author of The World Beneath: A Novel
