The Last Brazil of Benjamin East: A Novel

by Jonathan Freedman

Overview

It takes courage to believe in your dreams, and after heartbreaking failures, it takes courage to go on dreaming. Returning to America in the twilight of his life with an old valise, an irascible parrot, and an expired U.S. passport, Benjamin East still dares to dream big. When Benjamin meets Amy McCafferty, they recognize in each other an unbreakable belief in infinite possibilities. Although the plans they each had when they first met may never be realized, something bigger, better, and more eternal awaits them at the end of the road. Benjamin East is an American road story steeped in hope and longing, regret, love, and the courage of those who dare to dream. Lives intersect and are changed forever as one old man and his youthful companion cross the country in search of something they may never find. Along the way, they find love, friendship, and adventure, and the grain of truth that lies hidden in all of us, waiting to break into bloom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939555113
Publisher:	Bright Lights Press
Publication date:	06/15/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	274
File size:	634 KB

About the Author

Jonathan Freedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and writing mentor. His career spans four decades and three continents. This novel was thirty years in the making.

Editorial Reviews

2015-06-04
A returned expat and a young artist take a road trip across America.This novel from Freedman (Bounce, 2011, etc.), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a tale of reinvention and second chances. Serial entrepreneur and perpetual optimist Benjamin East left America nearly 40 years ago to try his luck in Brazil. Now, it's 1980, and having lost both his fortune and his beloved wife, Gisela, he steps off the plane in Miami, hops on the Greyhound, and heads north, intent on selling his quirky first novel to a New York publisher. In Washington, D.C., he's waylaid by the decades-younger Amy, who's fleeing her abusive husband. Somewhat implausibly, Amy begs Benjamin to accompany her to New York, where she hopes to become an artist. Both get a rude awakening in Manhattan. Publishers dismiss Benjamin's writing as amateurish, while Amy's work is deemed too primitive for art school. This unlikely pair then light out for San Francisco, believing that California will be more welcoming to a pair of outcast dreamers. Along the way, they begin to understand what they're really searching for. Benjamin is a classic American huckster and a salesman (he claims to have invented the phrase "the Big Apple") who is by turns charming and grating. His fast talk exhausts, but his desperate last-chance attempts at success are touching nonetheless. In the most affecting passages, he reflects on his early days in Brazil and his relationship with Gisela, which seemed promising but became as "meandering as the River of Doubt," marred by disappointments both personal and professional. His unlikely relationship with Amy is surprisingly complex, though there are moments when she comes across as more of an aging man's sexual fantasy than a person. And most of the people Benjamin and Amy encounter on their journey, like pompous writer Joshua and cowboy-drifter Maynard, are little more than stock characters. Yet Freedman pulls it all together in the final pages with an ending that embraces the "infinite possibilities" of life.A spirited, hopeful novel that serves as a reminder that change is always possible.

Kirkus Reviews