October 1, 2023
Not yet a legendary lumberjack, Paul Bunyan struggles with a mountain of debt while working in the bleak mines owned by grasping industrialist El Boffo. A quest prompted by his wife's illness brings him to another soon-to-b legend, steel-driving John Henry, who's escaped from wrongful conviction on a chain gang, and they join forces in a narrative probing race, class, and industrialization. A debut from Thoughtful Bro host Cecil. Prepub Alert.
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January 22, 2024
Cecil’s boisterous debut functions as both origin story and revisionist portrayal of American folk heroes Paul Bunyan and John Henry. Saddled with debt, Bunyan toils somewhere out west in the mines of Lump Town in what feels like the late 19th century, unearthing the energy source known as Lump. When one of the mineral’s side effects causes his wife, Lucette, to fall deathly ill, Bunyan skips town to the Windy City in search of El Boffo, the magnate who runs Lump Town. Rumor has it El Boffo has developed a machine that uses Lump to cure all ailments, and Bunyan hopes his boss will use it on Lucette before it’s too late. Before Bunyan manages to gain an audience with El Boffo, however, he meets and befriends Henry, who’s the run from the law for reasons not immediately specified, and their journeys intertwine as obstacles pile up. Cecil leans on some thread-worn tropes (for example, Lucette exists solely as damsel in distress), but he makes up for it with a fresh depiction of his legendary protagonists, portraying the wealth gap faced by Bunyan and the racial inequities that plague Henry. He also writes with a playful flair for language, dubbing El Boffo’s scientific showroom the Wondertorium and his healing machine the Simulorb. There’s plenty of substance to this fun romp. Agent: Chad Luibl, Janklow & Nesbit.
Starred review from January 15, 2024
Two American folk heroes join forces in the name of democracy. Cecil's sprightly debut is an adventure tale set around the late 1800s, but it retools the Paul Bunyan and John Henry myths with an eye on today's postcapitalist hellscape. Bunyan is a stout laborer in a polluted company town mining a fuel called Lump; when his wife, Lucette, is poisoned by Lump runoff, he's compelled to head to "the Windy City" and appeal to the company CEO, the cartoonish (and nakedly Trumpish) industrialist El Boffo, who's using Lump to develop an all-healing device. But access to El Boffo requires that the gentle giant defeat all comers in a boxing ring. He battles his final adversary, steel-driver John Henry, to a draw; realizing they're better off working together, they scheme to find a cure for Lucette and a way to bring Henry's family to Canada and escape slave catchers. They have the assistance of a folk creature's vague advice and a literal guiding light called the Gleam that will deliver the pair to the title's "Beautiful Destiny." Cecil has plainly inhaled not just the details of the Bunyan and Henry myths but the hyperbolic rhetoric of adventure tales; the novel is rife with cliffhanger chapter endings and feats of derring-do. That makes it a likable page-turner, but also a predictable one. The story is peppered with platitudes about capitalism ("Nothing lives in America unless it turns a profit, and nothing dies as long as it does"), and El Boffo's character is so nakedly villainous that his machinations (and fate) become uninteresting. The idea of using two idealized American folk characters to show how short the country has fallen is an inspired one with lots of potential, but here it's mostly serving a binary good-versus-evil melodrama. Durable characters, set in a new but familiar frame.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
March 1, 2024
Retellings of folk stories can be a rewarding if risky endeavor. These stories live in our collective consciousness, typically reflect our nation's identity, and often portray those values we most highly prize--honesty, integrity, courage, and resilience. First-time novelist Cecil leverages this familiarity to great effect in his fresh, fable-like narrative of two folk heroes. Paul Bunyan, hard-working and dependable, is slaving away in a Lump Town factory, hoping to save enough to free his mother from debtor's prison. When his beloved wife, Lucette, falls ill, he embarks on a journey to find a cure. He soon meets and befriends John Henry, a fugitive falsely accused and unjustly imprisoned, now on a similar mission to save his family. These two physically and morally strong men leap from the page; the dialogue simmers; and Cecil effortlessly braids in elements both mythological and mystical. Themes of capitalism, corruption, class, and race mirror our own social milieu, but the indelible spirit of these two men teaches us that the shared path is one that is always filled with hope.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.