The Recipe for Revolution

by Carolyn Chute

Overview

It’s September 1999 and the world is on the cusp of a new millennium. In rural Maine, Gordon St. Onge, known as “The Prophet”, presides over his controversial Settlement, a place rumored to be a cult, where his many wives and children live off the grid and off the land. Out in greater America, Bruce Hummer, the aging CEO of multinational corporation Duotron Lindsey, lays off workers by the thousands. Meanwhile, the newest member of the Settlement, fifteen year old Brianna Vandermast, is fired up and ready for change. Disillusioned with the covert local militia, she and other Settlement teens form the True Maine Militia. Putting her visionary ideas into practice, Bree pens “The Recipe”, an incendiary revolutionary document that winds up in the hands of wealthy elites, including Bruce Hummer.

When a chance drinking session during an airport layover brings Bruce and Gordon together, Hummer—in a confounding moment— gives Gordon a mysterious brass key, one turn of which has the potential to make heads roll and spark the unrest that is stirring in Egypt, Maine. As word of “The Recipe” spreads, myriad factions of anti-corporate revolt from across the country arrive at The Settlement wanting to make Gordon their poster boy. Gordon soon finds himself at the center of an uprising, the effects of which ripple beyond Settlement life.

In The Recipe for Revolution Carolyn Chute portrays politics, class, love, and friendship with acuity and complexity, giving us a pulsating, relevant book for today’s America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802129512
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	02/11/2020
Pages:	700
Sales rank:	778,434
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 2.00(d)

Read an Excerpt

Bree spreads her ringless hand on the thick stapled document lying between three empty coffee mugs on the long leafed table. She says, “What is this?”

He is just now entering the room with two more mugs, these with maple milk in them, one for her, one for him. His eyes widen. “Oh that. Well, in this world there’s your Recipe. Then there’s their Recipe.”

Her voice has always a smoky edge. “Project Megiddo it says. It’s the FBI. But what are you doing with it?” She giggles.

He positions the two brimming mugs on the table. He glances at her face which is purposely hidden by squiggles and twists of shining young-girl-hair, perfectly orange hair, her face deformed by whatever it was that went wrong when she was the size of a thumb…or earlier…maybe when she was a mere idea…though who could imagine Bree, her honey-color eyes set apart like a funhouse mirror image and her mind that to him once seemed shy, nervous or something…but, no, he is beginning to understand that she is not nervous of anything. He bets that the coil of her brain is radiating far more redly than her hair.

He explains, “Everybody has a copy of that thing. It’s not top secret. It was issued to fire departments, cops, EMTs. Rex…you know…he’s with the volunteer fire crowd.”

“I figured. Cuz of the red light on the dash in his pickup,” she says in a warm way.

He grunts. “Richard York. He’s just like you. He loves to share. He’s probably churned out half a million copies of that report.”

She giggles.

Editorial Reviews

In place of a traditional plot, Chute allows characters to slowly emerge, exert a kind of magnetic pull and then recede. It feels like the literary equivalent of a big choir with occasional soloist.

The New York Times Book Review - Nathan Hill

Praise for Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

“Carolyn Chute is the James Joyce of the backcountry, a Proust of rural society, an original in every meaning of the word.”— New York Times Book Review

“Quirky, intensely original...an intellectual page-turner...Chute combines strident political commentary with humor, surrealism, and inventive language... multilayered and complex, deeply critical of society but fiercely devoted to humans.”— O Magazine

“Deeply felt, scorchingly funny.”— Vanity Fair

“A 700-page piece of wonderful, infuriating, narrative energy...This is the work of a writer at the peak of her craft.”— Minneapolis Star Tribune

“As always Chute’s voice is smart, funny, and fired up about righting the wrongs of the world...fiery, impassioned, and unlike anything else you will ever probably read.” — Boston Globe

“[Chute] writes like a wild animal—ferocious, playful—making mincemeat of contemporary mores. Plenty to gnaw on here.”— More

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2019

Fans of Chute's earlier work will welcome the return of the quixotic characters introduced in her award-winning debut novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine. This newest is a sprawling, lavish saga about the rural folks of Heart's Content Road as they live, work, and plan for the future in their isolated realm. At the center of Chute's story is 39-year-old Gordon St. Onge, known as the Prophet and considered by some a terrorist cult leader. He is the backbone of the Settlement, a hidden, back-to-the-land enclave of cottages, gardens, orchards, and outbuildings where he holds sway over his many wives and children, assorted other families, and the Border Mountain Militia. Upstart Brianna and other teens burning with ideas different from Gordon's form the True Maine Militia to foment change of their own, penning a revolutionary document titled The Recipe that comes to the attention of Bruce Hummer, the aging CEO of a multinational company. What finally results is an anti-corporate revolt fanning out beyond little dot-on-the-map Egypt, ME. VERDICT Narrated by so many characters that Chute provides a lengthy character list, this quirky, deliciously inventive, deeply honest story portrays family feuds, warring political factions, and the complex layers of any community.—Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Library Journal

2019-09-30
Third volume in Chute's blistering series about the Settlement, a radical, politically incorrect collective of the disorderly and disaffected in rural Maine.

The Settlement revolves around "Prophet" Gordon St. Onge, who rails against corporations, the media, and the war machine; he also has 19 "wives," even more guns, and a friendly relationship with several right-wing militias. However, although the novel takes place from 1990 to 2000, the election of Donald Trump has clearly prompted its author to do some thinking about her previous willingness to declare her characters "no-wing." Chute is at pains to have Gordon denounce "Republican bullshit" and "so-called Christians" to his militia buddies, and she's backed off her previous contempt for middle-class progressives; Settlement residents form a relationship of wary mutual respect with a group of left-wing grassroots organizers. Nonetheless, Gordon's and his author's hearts are always with "the poor, meek, dishonored, deformed, disheartened, and displaced," and Chute makes it brutally clear that until the left gets over its distaste for "redneck[s]" and poor whites who refuse to be manipulated by racists, the same people will keep running the world. (The sexual power of teenage girls is another third-rail topic she fearlessly tackles.) The action here runs parallel to events in The School on Heart's Content Road (2008) and Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves (2014) but spotlights different people from her vast cast of characters. Fifteen-year-old Brianna Vandermast, newest of the wives, emerges as the leader of the Settlement's younger generation; their end run around Gordon toward even more radical dissent drives what there is of a plot. A manifesto and a mass rally prompt increasingly menacing government harassment and a warning of more nefarious deeds to come from corporate CEO Bruce Hummer, his conscience apparently pricked by his rapidly growing cancers. A few juicy personal conflicts keep the novel from devolving entirely into a political tract—but then again, Chute's fierce political vision has always been the most interesting thing about her work.

Messy, confrontational, way too long—and essential reading.

Kirkus Reviews

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