The first novel of country/folk/blues musician Adam Gnade, Hymn California is a meditation and exploration of place, what it is and how it shapes the lives of the people who inhabit it.
“Hymn California’s characters witness a strange wide-sweeping, panoramic America unfolding before them, while its 200 pages examine having an abusive relationship with a place (California) rather than a person. It shows displaced characters scattered across the continent, burdened by fear and homesickness while fighting to live unencumbered by bourgeois ideology. Death stalks at every intersection and on every riverbank. Lives sway in the delirium of wartime. Says Gnade, ‘A friend of mine asked me if I was trying to write ‘American magic realism’ with the book and I didn’t really have an answer for him. If it is, it was an accident’.”
From the 2008 review in the Creative Commons
https://creativecommons.org/2008/06/30/adam-gnade-releases-hymnn/
- Title: Hymn California
- Author: Adam Gnade
- Publisher: Dutchmoney
- Place: Newport, RI
- Year: 2008
- Printer: Eberhardt Press
- First Edition
- Softcover
- Length: 200pp
- Dimensions: 5” x 8”
- Condition: Perfect bound, there is some creasing and cracking around the spine, but the binding is still tight and complete. The cover has some noticeable shelf wear—scuffs, smudges, and tiny stains. The pages are clean—no folds, tears, or extraneous marks.