Kenyon Saint Claire is the son of a distinguished literary family, a keeper and teacher of the written word, but his America is a land of electronic images, big pharma, high-tech distraction, and endless advertising. False impressions are the stock in trade, and big metrics matter, especially onscreeen. That’s where Kenyon finds himself, isolated behind glass, portraying a televised version of himself on a scripted game show, avoiding the devouring eye of the camera that feeds his image to fifteen million viewers. The year is 1956.
Inspired by true events, groundbreaking in its evocation of an agitated, media-soaked half century, M. Allen Cunningham’s Q&A urgently reimagines the misunderstood 1950s quiz show scandals in light of our own time, as a moment of cultural reckoning whose reverberations we feel all around us today: in reality television, TV politics, the triumph of incoherence, and the pandemic problem of how to be real in a world of screen-induced self-deception.
Praise for M. Allen Cunningham
“A fully formed, timeless American writer.”
—Square Books, Oxford MS
“One of the bravest and most talented novelists writing today.”
—Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child, Pulitzer Prize Finalist
“A master storyteller.”
—Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight
“Cunningham’s prose is perfect—he writes dialogue and sentences that beg to be read aloud.”
In this whimsical, often funny, Depression-era tale, young Connor O’Halloran decides to share a treasure he’s discovered on an isolated stretch of Northern California beach. Almost overnight, his sleepy seaside village is comically transformed into a bastion of consumerism, home to a commode with a jeweled seat cover, a pair of genuinely fake rare documents, a mail-order bride, and an organ-grinder’s monkey named Mr. Sprinkles. But when it turns out that the treasure is not real, Connor must conspire with Miss Lizzie Fryberg and a handful of town leaders he’s dubbed The Ambergrisians to save their friends and neighbors from financial ruin. Along the way, he discovers other treasures in the sometimes languid, sometimes exciting days of that long-ago season. He is rich and then he isn’t. He learns to sail a boat and about sex. He meets a real actor. He sneaks into villainous Cyrus Dinkle’s house and steals his letter opener. He almost goes to jail. He loves Fiona Littleleaf. He finds a father. And best of all, he and little brother, Alex, reclaim their mother from the darkness of mental illness.
Praise for Treasure of the Blue Whale
Steven Mayfield crafts this well-conceived plot into a coming-of-age fable that is full of mystery, heroism, familial love, and humanity. It’s a genuine, imaginative, and endearing meditation on how a few good people working together can accomplish so much in a weary world.
“Readers looking for a slightly stylized yarn of small-town drama will find much to enjoy in this charming book. A whale of a tale concerning a boy who tries to lift everyone’s spirits”
