Godina izdanja: 2006
ISBN: 978-0-06-082524-9
Jezik: Srpski
Autor: Strani

The Lightning Keeper: A Novel Hardcover – 1 April 2006, by Starling Lawrence (Author)

Product details
Publisher: ‎ HarperCollins (1 April 2006)
Language: ‎ English
Hardcover: ‎ 414 pages

The Lightning Keeper is a sweeping epic novel of ambition, love, and enterprise in America. It is the story of an unlikely Romeo and Juliet romance at the dawn of the electric age, with the nation balancing on the brink of world war and a scientific revolution.
In 1914 Toma Pekocevic is a penniless immigrant in New York recently escaped from the bloody politics of the Balkans that have claimed most of his family. He is also a gifted inventor who designs a revolutionary water turbine while working with Harriet Bigelow, scion of a proud Connecticut iron-making dynasty now fallen on hard times. Their attraction is immediate and overwhelming, but every circumstance is against them.
Toma is eventually drawn inside the industrial empire of General Electric, his machine an essential cog in its grand scheme to provide electricity to the entire country. His invention is all he has after losing Harriet to a wealthy politician, but Toma is determined to win her back, setting the stage for a confrontation that could change not only his life but the course of scientific progress.
Deeply evocative and utterly engrossing, The Lightning Keeper is a rich tapestry of technology, romance, and war -- an unforgettable and distinctly American saga that establishes Starling Lawrence as one of the most talented writers at work today.

From Publishers Weekly
Sparks fly in Lawrence`s blend of romance and historical fiction, set against the struggle to harness electricity in the early 20th century. The editor-in-chief of W.W. Norton picks up where his earlier novel, Montenegro, left off: Toma Pekocevic lands in Naples, on his way from the political strife in the Balkans to America. In Italy, Toma meets Harriet Bigelow, the young heiress to a once prominent iron-making dynasty. A brief magnetic encounter leaves both adolescents changed—and charged—forever. Six years later, in 1914, the pair meet again by chance in New York. Determined to help Harriet save the Bigelow Iron Company from financial ruin, Toma invents a machine capable of revolutionizing electricity. But an accident forces Toma to choose between his passion for Harriet and his love for his war-torn homeland, now at the epicenter of WWI. Harriet too must choose between her love for the lonely immigrant and a wealthy suitor who could aid her family but whose affection leaves her cold. Meanwhile, General Electric has expressed interest in Toma`s idea—and will stop at nothing to control the possibilities of power. Skillfully intertwining fact and fiction, Lawrence generates an electric history of ideas, kindled by the flames of capital and passion. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Starling Lawrence, editor in chief of W. W. Norton, has written a sprawling, old-fashioned novel with lessons for us all about the `miracles` of technology, personal progress, competition, and happiness. It is also about love, an inventor`s mind, the battle between small businesses and corporations, and the electrification of America. Gorgeous language, rich period details, and an elegant plot impressed critics; clearly, Lawrence did his research, even if he offers up some dense passages. Photographs and the inclusion of historic figures round out the compelling story. In sum, The Lightning Keeper `draws us in and allows us to live briefly, magically, marvelously in the world as it once was` (Chicago Tribune).Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
On a trip to Italy, Harriet Bigelow meets Toma Pekocevic, igniting a spark that is still alive six years later when they meet again by chance in New York. While World War I looms, Harriet`s father gets a huge contract that could save his ironworks. But to produce the number of wheels in the time given, a new source of energy is needed. Toma, somewhat of a genius with machines, uses Nikola Tesla`s theories to build a new turbine that will produce all the energy needed and possibly clear his way to Harriet. However, a terrible accident and the interests of General Electric intervene, and plans go awry. Building on the story begun in his first novel, Montenegro (1997), Lawrence employs the language and style of the turn of the last century along with plenty of historical figures and references to science and technology. He has created a very American saga of the private struggles of a family business and of European immigrants alongside the very large conflicts of war and technology, and the business of both. Elizabeth Dickie
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“The Lightning Keeper is a great novel, a transcendent and enduring American novel. I loved it.” (Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird)

“Skillfully intertwining fact and fiction, Lawrence generates an electric history of ideas, kindled by the flames of capital and passion.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Lawrence blends science and romance into an immensely readable story; his descriptions … are as exciting as they are beautiful.” (Library Journal (starred review))

“Lawrence has created a very American saga.” (Booklist)
About the Author
Starling Lawrence is the editor in chief and vice chairman of W.W. Norton & Company. He is the author of the novel Montenegro and the story collection Legacies. He lives in New York City and northwestern Connecticut.

From The Washington Post
In his new novel, The Lightning Keeper, Starling Lawrence paraphrases Thomas Edison`s famous remark, `To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.` In his own literary invention, Lawrence has jettisoned the junk but retained the imagination and given us a deeply satisfying novel of love and electricity. It is not only a complex romantic tale, but also a grand story of science and American industry in the years before World War I. We are given a window into the conniving nature of men in power, where brilliance is a valued commodity, but results, no matter how obtained, are gold.
The `lightning keeper` of the title is Toma Pekocevic. We first meet him on the docks of Naples, Italy, in 1908, where he has fled the Balkan Wars. As a teenager in Naples, he has a brief, romantic encounter with Harriet Bigelow, the daughter of a Connecticut ironworks magnate vacationing with her family. After a fluttering of pages they meet again in New York, a scene that relies too much on coincidence in this otherwise tightly constructed novel. Six years have passed, and Toma (now known as Thomas Peacock) is struggling to become an electrical engineer while Harriet desperately tries to save her father`s failing company. Toma does his best to help her, but his efforts are disastrously thwarted and Harriet is lost to him.
In 1916 Toma is hired by General Electric to perfect his water turbine under the aegis of Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a hump-backed dwarf who is (as he was in real life) one of GE`s leading engineers. Steinmetz is a scheming charmer, who early on informs Toma, `No country can be truly great without the foundation of an ample energy supply coupled with a ruthless ingenuity in its exploitation.` His goal is to be the first to bring electricity to every home in America. In Steinmetz, Lawrence has created an astonishing character, a man as true to his vision as he is to his word. He`s an arrogant genius, and the friction between him and Toma abrades and warms the story.
The setting of much of the novel is Beecher`s Bridge (Lawrence`s fictional stand-in for Norfolk, Conn.), and he populates it with a fine range of characters. Sen. Fowler Truscott, a wealthy neighbor, is as shrewd in business as he is in politics. He may drink too much and send too many golf balls sailing across his vast lawn, but he plays a crucial role in the lives of Harriet and Toma. Especially compelling are Horatio Washington, the strong-willed black man who runs the water wheel at the Bigelow ironworks, and Olivia, the light-skinned beauty who most people believe is his wife. What happens to Horatio sets the second half of the book in motion, and Olivia, her battered soul released, falls in love with Toma. In this novel, sex is used for comfort, while love remains something elusive and worth waiting for.
Lawrence gives us a number of wonderful interludes, including one where Toma dines with Charles Coffin, the chairman of GE, in his posh, private railroad car parked on the tracks in the middle of Washington, D.C. Another is a golf game with Sen. Truscott, an amateur duffer, and Toma and Steinmetz, who have never held putters before. It is both a comic scene and a telling one -- here Steinmetz unfolds his plan to Toma:
` `Now, suppose we are playing our game of golf, and a storm comes up. I stand over there, with my feet in the water, and I make so.` Steinmetz raised the putter straight up at the heavens. `What do you think?`
` `I would say you are mad.`
` `Unless?`
` `Unless . . . unless you wish to be struck.`
` `Exactly so. That is the object of my plan. I want the lightning to come to me.` `

Lawrence`s descriptive gifts are such that the history and science of electrical energy and turn-of-the-century manufacturing are given the power and fascination they must have held for people of that time. His writing is always crisp, often beautiful: `The incandescent cable burst through its vaporized sheathing, the arresters showering sparks, the air around them glowing like the halo of a saint.` Clearly, Lawrence has a love of his subject, and readers might very well come away feeling as much fondness for a turbine engine as for the romantic vision of an America once lit by lamplight. This many-layered story pulsates with the power of two hearts beating in the darkness, waiting for that flicker of electricity that will light not only their way, but the way of a nation.

Reviewed by Bruce Murkoff
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Ima inventarski pečat, dobro očuvano.
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