Additional information
by Jim Heynen (Author)
Seventeen-year-old Alice Marie Krayenbraak is beautiful, witty, a star student, and a gifted athlete. On the surface, she has it all. But in Alice's hometown of Dutch Center, Iowa, nothing is as it seems. Behind the façade of order and tidiness, the family farm is failing. Alice's mother is behaving strangely amid apocalyptic fears of Y2K. And her parents have announced their plans to send her special-needs sister Aldah away. On top of it all, the uniformly Dutch Calvinist town has been rattled by an influx of foreign farm workers.
It's the fall of senior year, and Alice now finds herself at odds with both family and cultural norms when she befriends and soon falls in love with Nickson Vang, the son of Hmong immigrants. Caught in a period of personal and community transformation, Alice and Nickson must navigate their way through vastly different traditions while fighting to create new ones of their own. Funny and provocative, amusing and unsettling, The Fall of Alice K. marks a watershed moment in the publishing career of author, Jim Heynen.
Front Jacket
Praise for The Fall of Alice K.
"Wise, wryly humorous, and aching with tenderness for his characters, Jim Heynen has here gifted readers with his finest and most poignant book."--Ron Hansen, author of A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion and She Loves Me Not "How wonderful to meet someone as bright, courageous, complex, and real as Alice. This is a terrific novel, at turns funny, heartbreaking, touching, and poetic--a compelling read that just keeps getting better and better. I loved this book."
--Shannon Olson, author of Welcome to My Planet and Children of God Go Bowling "The eponymous heroine of Jim Heynen's The Fall of Alice K. is a wonderful creation--smart, courageous, capable, and determined to go her own way. She's also a true original and ready to take her place in the pantheon of literary teenagers."
--Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 and American Boy "If only there were more unruly girls like Alice K., unwilling to submit to dogma or tradition--the world would be a better place."
--Julia Scheeres, author of Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives "Heynen captures perfectly that time of life when we struggle to define ourselves against the backdrop of our family, our community, our religion, and above all, the dreams we have for ourselves. Alice is a character I won't soon forget. Hers is a deeply moving story shaped by an expert and generous hand."
--Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and Break the Skin "Long a true master of the very short story, Jim Heynen shows himself wonderfully adept in The Fall of Alice K. For those who've known the heartland farm country Jim has written from, this new book contains familiar terrain but deepens and varies it movingly. Those who haven't met his work before are in for a readerly treat and many surprises. He writes of the simplicity of the complex, and the complexity of the simple better than anyone I know."
--Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle
Author Biography
A widely published author, Jim Heynen is perhaps best known for his collections of short prose featuring young farm boys: "The One Room Schoolhouse" (Knopf, 1993; Vintage, 1994), "The Boys' House" (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), "You Know What is Right" (North Point Press, 1985), and "The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap" (Graywolf, 1979). His most recent collection of poems is titled "Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems" (Confluence Press, 2001). He has written two young adult novels, "Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice" (Henry Holt, 2000; Harper-Collins, 2001) as well as "Being Youngest" (Henry Holt, 1997), and one major book of nonfiction, "One Hundred Over 100" (Fulcrum, 1990), which featured one hundred American centenarians. He has frequently been featured on National Public Radio reading his own stories and has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction. Jim Heynen lives in St. Paul with his wife Sally Williams, a former books editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
