Overview
A wonderfully tough-minded novel from a master dramatist of the poignant, interwoven crises of modern life
Split Estate opens with devastating scenes of a family at a horrific juncture: the wife of Arthur King and mother of his two teenage children, Celia and Cam, has recently committed suicide, jumping out the window of their New York apartment.
Charlotte Bacon's luminous new novel tracks the King family as it struggles to survive in the months that follow. Arthur, an attractive lawyer who has always been edgy about city dwelling, decides they must move back to his home state of Wyoming for the summer, where his mother, Lucy, welcomes her orphaned grandchildren and her wounded son to her much loved but diminished ranch. From the perspective of each protagonist in turn, we watch shy Celia and handsome Cam, distraught Arthur and brave Lucy face themselves and their future in a Wyoming that is beautiful and consoling, yet beset by new threats of destruction.
A split estate is a form of real property in which the mineral rights have been split off from the other land uses to which the owner is entitled. This has transformed the landscape the Kings love and jeopardized Lucy's independence. In truth, the Kings' very lives have become split estates—for Celia, on the brink of adolescence; for Cam, approaching independent adulthood; for Arthur, divided between the West and New York. Split Estate is a heartrending depiction of an American family sturggling to deal with irrevocable damage to their lives and surroundings.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Bacon's beautifully wrought, precisely observed and haunting latest follows a New York family struggling to survive a suicide. When Laura King jumps from the window of her Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, she leaves her husband, Arthur, and her teenage children, Cam and Celia, in emotional limbo. Seeking solace and a change of scene, Arthur takes the children cross-country to his mother, Lucy's, home in Callendar, Wyo. With pitch-perfect command of distinctive voices, Bacon (There Is Room for You; Last Geography) divides the narrative between Arthur, Celia and Cam, and Lucy King, all of whom feel guilt and anger about Laura's suicide. A major plot strand relates to the issue of mineral and drilling rights under the ranch land and gives the novel its title: each of the Kings strike out in self-destructive ways, related and unrelated to proposed methane wells, leading to a shocking denouement. Bacon captures the stark Wyoming landscape and Western ethos, and the power of buried secrets. She masterfully portrays complex family relationships in the wake of irrevocable damage. (Feb.)
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