The Moments Lost

Abandoning the Wisconsin dairy farm of his bookish sexually precocious youth Franklyn Shivs arrives in turn-of-thecentury Chicago where his position as a newspaper reporter a job to which he is singularly ill-suited obliges his reluctant participation in a parade of “historic” events even as his bohemian private life becomes ensnarled in a tangle of unorthodox human relationships. Among them is one with an uncommonly beautiful but unavailable woman whose inability to return his love compels his reexamination of the posture of indifference and disengagement that he finds morally so alluring. Assigned to cover the bloody Wobblie-led 1913 copper mine strike in northern Michigan Franklyn is drawn into an illicit and passionate affair with one of the strike’s most militant leaders. When she becomes pregnant with their child he is faced with a decision—to betray himself or to endure the loss of the woman he loves the consequences of which must not only impact the strike’s outcome but test the full mettle of his humanity. The Moments Lost is a bildungsroman of ravishing lyricism a profound inquiry into the nature of a distinctly American darkness. Epic in scope and imagination it confirms Bruce Olds as one of the most talented and original writers at work today.