The Other Side of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

hamburgers, and crates of dead chickens.
    Hearts and Minds . A fifty-five-year-old chemist, in line for
a Nobel prize and in need of a heart transplant, receives the heart of a 19-year-old black woman who has died in an automobile crash; following the transplant, he abandons his scientific research in favor of the life of a bon vivant .
    Her Private Train . An historical novel based on Theodore Roosevelt’s 1905 wolf hunt—the tale told primarily from the p.o.v. of his daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth—for which hunt TR set out for the territory of Oklahoma in a private train of 22 cars, with 70 fox hounds, 67 greyhounds, 60 saddle and packhorses, 44 hunters, beaters, wranglers, journalists, and one woman.
    Charlie’s Story . A charming young man in his mid-thirties takes up residence in an international city in the Far East, and becomes involved with a less than charming man whose fate has (wonderful) trans formative effects on our hero.
    The James Brothers . In heaven, Henry and William join with Frank and Jesse to steal the pearly gates.
    Max Baer and the Star of David . The tale of Max Baer’s relationship with a black couple who, before and after he becomes heavyweight champion—a Star of David first adorning his trunks when he defeats Hitler’s boxer, Max Schmeling, in Yankee Stadium—serve him faithfully as Man Friday and housekeeper, and in which tale we discover that the couple are not husband and wife but brother and sister, and that their child is Max Baer’s son.
    Make-A-Wish . A gifted young violinist, knowing she has but a year to live, shows up at her mentor’s door and declares that, like those children who get to meet their favorite athlete or rock star before they die, she has chosen to live with him for the duration.
    Jules and Jim Go to White’s Castle . In 1947, two young Brooklyn Dodger fans make a pilgrimage to Maine to visit their favorite writer, E. B. White, in order to persuade White to write a book in which he has the boys befriend Jackie Robinson, thereby
enabling Robinson to survive a signal moment in his first year in the Major Leagues.
    We Gather Together . A Thanksgiving reunion wherein the children and grandchildren of a warring Irish family bring the family back together on the occasion of the silver anniversary of their parents’ divorce.
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    The story I kept thinking about on our way across Massachusetts and up toward Tenants Harbor was Make-A-Wish , even though—because?—I had not chosen it as one of the three I thought would make the best novel for Seana to work on. The three I chose were Charlie’s Story , Tag Sale , and A Missing Year , mainly because they contained elements I could relate to from Max’s life or my own.
    Which, Seana had declared while we sat at the kitchen table my first night home, had nothing to do with whether or not any of them would make a good novel. Because something had happened to you, or might happen to you, had zilch to do with what made fiction work. In fiction—this is what she said she’d learned from my father—imagination and empathy: being able to conjure up lives and times unlike your own—were everything.
    â€œDoes that mean that what I’ve been believing all these years—that Triangle was based on your relationship with your mother and father—had no truth to it?”
    â€œDon’t try to get funny with me, young man,” she said. “My life’s my life, and my stories are my stories.”
    She fixed us tumblers of Drambuie over ice, then came around the table and sat next to me, an arm across my shoulder as if we were old schoolyard buddies, and said that she’d been thinking about Nick’s death, and had decided it was a bad idea for me to go up to Maine by myself, and that she was going to go with me.
    â€œEven if I ask you to?” I said.
    â€œEven if you ask me to,” she said, and then, before I could try
to kiss