Don Lee

Wrack and Ruin

A Novel

An exhilarating comic satire with the quirky energy of The Wonder Boys and Sideways.

Lyndon Song, a renowned sculptor, has fled New York City to become a Brussels sprouts farmer in the small California town of Rosarita Bay. Lyndon has a brother, Woody, an indicted financier turned movie producer, and Woody has a plan, involving a golf-course resort on Lyndon’s land and an aging kung-fu diva from Hong Kong with a mean kick and a meaner drinking problem.

A dreadlocked buddy with an artificial leg, a small plot of exceptionally lush marijuana, two field biologists studying western snowy plovers, a disgraced museum curator, and Lyndon’s great love, the impulsive mayor of Rosarita Bay—these are only some of the complications in Lyndon and Woody’s lives over one madcap Labor Day weekend.

Hilarious and philosophical, this many-hued novel about the landscape of contemporary “multicultural” America is critically acclaimed Don Lee’s best book yet.

Don Lee teaches creative writing at Macalester College and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His story collection Yellow won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his novel Country of Origin won an American Book Award and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

April 2008 / hardcover / ISBN 978-0-393-06232-8
5 1/2" x 8 1/4" / 336 pages / Fiction