‘Memoir’ is far too thin a term to contain Hilary Masters’s
Last Stands. It is a journey: from 1880 to the present, from Custer to Mencken, from Kansas City to Arlington National Cemetery. Hilary Masters, a gifted and seasoned novelist, has composed an unforgettable portrait of his family, a patchwork quilt cut from memory and stitched with his own understanding.
*****
"A book that is small, whole and thoroughly satisfying. Brings the dead to life by ventriloquism and mimicry. Recollections as fixed and poignant as family photographs."
--Donald Hall, New York Times Book Review
Last Stands is a wonderful evocation of the American myth and dream, a deeply moving story literally touching, as only the true summoned memory can, all our history from Andrew Jackson until here and now. The principal figures--especially the poet, Edgar Lee Masters, and Tom Coyne, unreconstructed caverlyman and adventurer--are so deftly realized as to become part and parcel of our own memories. Funny and yet very sad. at once lyrical and legendary,
Last Stands is a rare work which offers up a wise understanding of ourselves and of the American story through the lives of a crew of unforgettble characters.
--George Garrett
In
Last Stands Hilary Masters craftily lures and charms us with a seamless interleaving of the past--as we do it everyday--with the shifting contexts of the present, civilized and amusing, poignant and life-enhancing, a beguiling and memorable achievment.
--Wright Morris
