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Abbeville
Abbeville
Abbeville
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Abbeville

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Until the dot.com bubble burst, George Bailey never gave much thought to why his grandfather seemed so happy.

But then George’s wealth vanished, rocking his self-confidence, threatening his family’s security and making his adolescent son’s difficult life even more painful. Returning to the little Central Illinois farm town of Abbeville, where his grandfather had prospered and then fallen into ruin, flattened during the Depression, George seeks out the details of this remarkable man’s rise, fall, and spiritual rebirth, hoping he might find a way to recover himself.

Abbeville sweeps through the history of late-19th through early-21st century Americaamong loggers stripping the North Woods bare, at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, with French soldiers at the Battle of Verdun, into the abyss of the Depression, and finally toward the new millennium’s own nightmares. At the same time it examines life at its most intimate. How can one hold onto meaning amidst the brutally indifferent cycles of war and peace, flood and drought, boom and bust, life and death?

In clean, evocative prose that reveals the complexity of people’s moral and spiritual lives, Fuller tells the simple story of a man riding the crests and chasms of the 20th century, struggling through personal grief, war, and material failure to find a place where the spirit may repose. An American story about rediscovering where we’ve been and how we’ve come to be who we are today, Abbeville tells the tale of the world in small, of one man’s pilgrimage to come to terms with himself while learning to embrace the world around him.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 1, 2009
ISBN9781936071036
Abbeville

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    From My Blog...When the Dot-com craze went from boom to bust, George Bailey decided he needed to reevaluate his life, and as his world was crumbling around him, he found himself thinking of his grandfather more often than not, a man who went from a farmer to a very prosperous man until the collapse of the stock market, and yet managed to pick himself up again and carry on. Abbeville by Jack Fuller is the story of Karl Schumpeter and the lessons his grandson George learns from retracing his grandfather's steps, researching his life and through his own memories of his grandfather. Fuller's novel is based rather loosely on his own grandfather and makes for an intriguing look at history and the manner in which history repeats itself. Jack Fuller takes the reader to Abbeville, a small farm town in Illinois, where Karl's life was forever changed.Karl's father sent him to be an apprentice to his Uncle John Schumpeter who first teaches him to keep ledgers and where he learned the logging trade and a few life lessons that served him well later in life, courtesy of the Dutchman Hoekstra. After his time in Michigan, Karl headed to Chicago where he quickly found himself on the trading floors. Much to his delight, the girl he had been sweet on was also in Chicago that summer apprenticing as a seamstress and Karl and Cristina began to plan a life together. The reader is drawn into the rich history of logging and transitioned easily to the trading floors of Chicago, leading up to the stock market crash of 1929, The Great Depression and WWI. Through it all, the reader grows closer to Karl, a young man who has a tender heart and an eagerness to learn. Fuller takes the reader through the tumultuous times and demonstrates the strength, courage and tenacity to ride the currents of not only the prosperous times, but also the desperate times, of which Karl experiences his fair share.Abbeville is an astonishingly beautiful novel of subtle lessons passed down through generations and through the memory of George, the reader learns about five generations and the amazing history that accompanies those generations in a rapidly paced novel. The lessons Karl passed down are subtle, yet powerful ones and they are lessons George ultimately recalls and shares with his son Rob. Life is rarely an easy ride and the measure of a person can often be found in how well they deal with the hardest times in their lives. I would not hesitate to recommend Abbeville to any reader, especially those interested in history and multi-generational family relationships. Abbeville is a quick and powerful read and one that would be perfect for a discussion group.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set in rural Illinois the small town of Abbeville is the main location of this new novel by Jack Fuller. Its narrator George Bailey has just seen his suburban Chicago dot com company go belly up in a national economic downturn. Bailey looking for answers to the knocks his own life has given him returns to the home of his grandparents Karl and Cristina who likewise started off in life doing well but later fell on hard times--though always finding a way to cope. George narrates the lives of his grandparents particularly Karl as a young man working for his very wealthy Uncle John who shows him the ins and outs of the financial markets--giving young Karl a job as a trader on the Chicago commodity market. Uncle John though is a ruthless businessman--something Karl is not and eventually Karl returns home with his young bride Cristina to start a family and to try to modernize small town Abbeville. He meets with some resistance most notably from a young lawyer Harley Ansel who he grew up with and who holds a grudge against him--for in Ansel's mind Karl had stolen Cristina's love away from him. For a while things go well--Karl is able to bring electric light to his small town--but when the great depression hits Karl who has become manager and owner of the local bank is wiped out along with most of his neighbors. Karl has a generous nature but the catastrophe is much more than one man can handle. He goes down with his town. He also takes the rap for his brother Fritz's shady businsess dealings. Ansel is more than happy to shift the onus of those dealings to the man who stole his girlfriend. Abbeville willy rally around Karl in support but he winds up doing two years of prison time anyway. On release--he returns to Abbeville--doing odd jobs eventually getting a waiver from the governor to run Abbeville's post office. He makes his living--he goes on--a humble man and a good neighbor to all. One of the things I like most about this book is how it juxtaposes our current economic shakiness to the depression era years--people finding ways to manage. What Fuller's book implies (with a small i on imply) is that good people will always tend to support each other when the need arises. Karl's daughter Betty visits Karl while he's in prison--she finds work in another town to help support her mother and to keep their home together. Karl refuses to foreclose on people no longer able to pay their mortgages, puts the people of his community before the interests of his own business--the bank. From things I've heard from my parents and my grandmother when she was still alive these kind of things did happen during those years, there were people like tha--not all (like Karl's Uncle John) , but some. So this story for me has its own realism--its own trueness. The narrator George Bailey himself seems more the chip off his grandfather's block--than his great uncles. He is coping himself with his young son Rob's lack of self confidence. The trip into his grandfather's past serves as a catalyst for how he will deal with Rob's basic unhappiness. And before the book ends it will pay a dividend.The novel itself I see as a slice of life of several generations of an intelligent, ambitious but an ordinary family. How they get by over these generations is relateable to lots and lots of other more than less ordinary people as well. Fuller's prose I found a little stiff at times--I'm not sure others would see it that way--but for me it doesn't always flow that well. The story is compact though--very easy to follow. I think that made up some for that. It's a easy read--and entertaining enough. A real piece of 20th century Americana--working the historical very well into the fictional. Fuller is a good writer--not a great one but Abbeville is both well concieved and compelling plotted. Though it is flawed all in all it's a good book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Abbeville is set against the corn fields of rural Illinois and the bustle of Chicago's financial world, from the venerable Board of Trade to the dot-com boom venture capitalists of late last century. It's the story of four generations of men – and the women in their lives – who learned the hard way about wealths sometimes fleeting nature. The chapters are divided between George Bailey, a 20th century investment banker, and his grandfather Karl Schumpeter. The novel follows each one's crises – both financial and personal – as the systems they had built their lives on crumbled around them. Ultimately, however, it is the relationships between the characters that drew me in and built toward a satisfying conclusion.This book is clearly being marketed toward a male readership, with a Father's day release date, and I guess it makes sense. The central theme is male bonding, and much of the action happens in the (historically) all-male arenas of the trading pit, logging camp, and small town bank. But I was engrossed by the stories and not at all put off by the definite gender slant of the book, which seem like just another way into discovering a different world. At 250 (sparse) pages, Abbeville felt a lot shorter. Partly, I think, because it's written like a short story: taking place over a compressed time frame, and revealing – rather than developing – the characters. Overall, it was a delightful piece of light reading. I probably won't come back to it again and again, but it gave me a very pleasant way to spend the past few days.**This review is based on pre-publication proofs and may not reflect the published edition of the work reviewed.**
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How do you go on when you have lost everything?That’s the question at the heart of Abbeville. George Bailey has lost everything in the dot-com bust. His office, which once bustled with activity and the smell of money, is now deserted. He may lose his home and he has to pull his son out of private school. How can he keep his family together in the face of such a change?George goes back to his roots, back to his hometown of Abbeville. His grandfather, Karl, once owned the mill, the bank, and a lot of the land around it…and he lost it all in the Depression. Still, his grandfather held onto his wife, his daughter and his will to be happy. George goes looking for the source of Karl’s happiness and he finds strength to keep going. In the process, he gives his son something to hang on to, a foundation for an insecure boy facing a lot of changes. The material sounds sad, but the tone is very hopeful.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Abbeville is the story of George Bailey and his grandfather Karl’s life. George finds himself reminiscing about his grandfather’s financial rise and fall in the town of Abbeville, Indiana, after he himself fails financially in the dot com bust. The story begins with George returning to Abbeville, a place where he spent summers with his grandparents, then switches to the grandfather as a young man making his first trip to Chicago to learn business from an uncle. The author progresses through Karl’s life while occasionally jumping back to the present and George’s situation. George seems to compare his situation to that of his grandfather’s. However, his grandfather went through much harder times than George could imagine going through himself.Although this was a difficult story for me to get through, I enjoyed it very much. I was impressed with the writing style of the author. The novel was well written and had a nice flow. At first, I would have wished for a smoother segue between the past and present but was able to overcome my discomfort as I ready further in to the story. By the end, I was waiting with anticipation to find out what happened to both Karl and George. I would recommend this story to friends and family.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    There is a thrill to stumbling on a book that generates an energy that makes you want to furiously turn its pages. Sometimes that energy comes from the plot, a story seed so well-planted that the reader becomes nearly obsessed with the desire to know what happens next. Sometimes that energy comes from a character so original in voice or so besotted by secrets that you can’t help but follow them, like a friend, to the bitter end. And sometimes the very rhythm and beauty of the story’s prose carries you along like a wave and makes you forgive all other shortcomings the novel may have. Abbeville by Jack Fuller is not a novel that throbs with any such energy, but there is pleasure to be found in turning its pages. The name of one of the novel’s two main characters, George Bailey, comes loaded with images of Jimmy Stewart reaching into his pocket to exuberantly exclaim, “JuJu’s petals!” then running through the streets crying out “Merry Christmas!” Exuberance is not an emotion on the radar of the George Bailey of Abbeville. The dot-com crash has left this George Bailey down in the dumps, but politely so. He’s not snapping at his depressed son or his every-pleasant wife, he’s not going to a bar to slug a schoolteacher’s husband. Instead, he heads to nearby Abbeville to find some answers by visiting the old haunt’s of his grandfather, Karl Schumpeter – a man who also lost it all to an economy gone bust. Karl’s story is the dramatic heart of this novel. Like with George, exuberance and rage are not emotions that Karl seems even remotely familiar with. We are treated to moments of pleasure when Karl learns to fly-fish, or makes a tidy bundle of cash in the pits of the Board of Trade, or brings the first electric lights to Abbeville. There are also moments of sadness as a soldier in World War I, when he goes bankrupt and to jail, and when his brother dies; but it’s hard to worry too much about Karl. He has a steady head that he keeps up and pointed to the future as lesser men around him crumble. The crisp arc of Karl’s story takes the interesting times of early 20th century American history and makes them come to life, succinctly and with a clarity that cuts through the romantic, soft-focus lens often trained on that era. Karl hops a freight train bound for Chicago and instead of staring out at the stars, he keeps a watchful eye for train detectives and worries about finding a good spot to disembark in secret. Where Jimmy Stewart’s bank vault is a place where two dollar bills can nestle and mate, Karl’s bank collapses and his vault holds nothing but ghosts. Not surprisingly, Karl survives his troubles and goes on to live a modest life where he finds joy in such small pleasures as delivering the mail, taking care of the school house, and fishing. His grandson, George Bailey takes the fishing message to heart and in A River Runs Through It moment, George finds a way to connect with the tenuousness of his life and with his troubled son through fly-fishing. The fly-fishing fails to bring in the basket-full of cash to save George from the money troubles he dwells on earlier in the novel, but, like his grandfather, George takes it all in stride. Afterall, it’s a wonderful life!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Abbeville is a short, well-written novel built on a solid structure, but it should be twice as long to do justice to the story Jack Fuller attempts. The book tells the parallel stories of the narrator’s attempt to rebuild his life after the bursting of the dot-com bubble and his grandfather’s own boom and bust struggle in the Great Depression. The grandfather’s story predominates and involves several complex subplots. The central theme to the story is the conflict between the grandfather’s desire to succeed and his perceived duty to help people. This themes plays out primarily in the relationship between the grandfather and his younger brother, whose wastrel ways result in the grandfather’s financial and social downfall. Unfortunately, there is not enough flesh on the bones. Both the plot and the characters are too sparsely drawn to make them compelling. For example, the key act that culminates in the grandfather’s ruin is described so cryptically, in just one brief sentence, that the reader must speculate about why what happened happened. At least one key storyline just ends with no explanation other than that people often disappeared during the Great Depression. Other story lines simply fizzle out.Without details, the characters and their relationships are flat and stiff. The tension between the brothers is described so sparingly that it is difficult to fully understand the relationship, let alone to care about it. The grandfather comes off as less a noble man sacrificing for his internal sense of honor as an unsympathetic, thick headed martyr. The narrator never rises above a character sketch of a concerned but clueless father. It could be that Fuller was trying for a style as strong, clean, and minimalist as his rural Midwest setting. But the result reads more like an unfinished outline.

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Abbeville - Jack Fuller

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