Very Old Bones (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

The Phelan clan has gathered for a most unusual event: the reading of Peter Phelan's will - by Peter himself. But the Phelans have always been a bit eccentric, larger-than-life in both their sins and their salvations. In this extraordinary novel, William Kennedy chronicles the complex, moving, and sometimes hilarious saga of a hard-pressed, hard-drinking Irish-American family. From Malachi, the nineteenth-century patriarch whose religious fervor drove him to the ultimate sin; to Francis, Peter's self-exiled brother (and hero of "Ironweed" ); to Orson - half insider, half outsider, teetering on the brink of madness - the Phelans come vibrantly to life. Weaving together the seperate but interlocking threads that make up the Phelan tapestry, Kennedy captures in lyrical langauge the boundaries of love and redemption, of art, and of life itself.

William Kennedy, author, screenwriter and playwright, was born and raised in Albany, New York. Kennedy brought his native city to literary life in many of his works. The Albany cycle, includes Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Ironweed.The versatile Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Ironweed, the play Grand View, and cowrote the screenplay for the The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola. Kennedy also wrote the nonfiction O Albany! and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car. Some of the other works he is known for include Roscoe and Very Old Bones.Kennedy is a professor in the English department at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the founding director of the New York State Writers Institute and, in 1993, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Literary Lions Award from the New York Public Library, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Governor's Arts Award. Kennedy was also named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and a member of the board of directors of the New York State Council for the Humanities.