Love and Glory
Dell Publishing, 1984. Tenth Printing. Mass market paperback. [10], 206, [8] pages. Cover has slight wear. Includes Prologue, Chapters 1 through 35, and an Epilogue. To Get Where He Wanted He Had To Hit Rock Bottom, and Live Long Enough To Get Back Up. This is a straightforward, unrelenting, shamelessly romantic novel that's about a two year obsession. Boone Adams: He was so smart he wrote half the English papers for the freshman class, when he wasn't getting drunk at night and waking up hung over in the morning. To him life was full of promise . . . just the ones it didn't intend to keep. Jennifer Grayle: She was the campus golden girl, so rich, so pretty, that every boy wanted to take her out. Except Boone. He wanted to marry her. John Merchent: He was tall and blond with blue eyes and a cleft in his chin like Cary Grant's. He didn't have Boone's lively imagination, but he had something else: Jennifer. The author is also the author of the bestselling Spenser novels. Robert Brown Parker (September 17, 1932 – January 18, 2010) was an American writer of fiction, primarily of the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. Parker also wrote two other series based on an individual character: He wrote nine novels based on the fictional character Jesse Stone, a Los Angeles police officer who moves to a small New England town, and six novels based on the fictional character Sunny Randall, a female private investigator. Parker wrote four Westerns starring the duo Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. Love and Glory is a 1983 novel by Robert B. Parker. The story is told in the first person by Boone Adams. It is a coming-of-age and love story. There is explicit and implicit reference to and imitation of The Great Gatsby. Much of the novel takes place at the fictional Taft University, which Parker used later as the setting for the 1989 Spenser novel Playmates and where Susan Silverman teaches. The protagonist tells of his days at an eastern college in the United States, where he falls in love with a girl but is unable to win her. He leaves school to become a writer, but drink and his frank comments lose him his day jobs before he can become a real writer. He spirals down, moving west, while drinking and taking ever-lower jobs. Along the way, he gets sent to Korea during the Korean War. Finally, he hits bottom, but with a mis-interpreted line from The Great Gatsby, his enduring love for his unrequited love, and the good luck of getting a job from someone, he is able to turn himself around. All the time, the one thing he has been able to hold on to is his collection of unsent letters to his love. After he has regained health and direction, he returns to the east to be near his love and to work his way to being a writer. He re-enters school and winds up getting his doctorate in English at the same time she does. Through his years of finishing his bachelor's, and getting his graduate degrees, he gets closer to her, eventually becoming more than a friend, and convincing her that she should divorce her successful husband, who is the head of the English Department, to marry the protagonist. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: Love, Taft University, Writers, Alcoholism, Korean War, Unrequited Love, Doctorate, Protagonist, Divorce, Redemption, Boone Adams, Jennifer Grayle, John Merchent
ISBN: 0440146291
[Book #81910]
Price: $10.00