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Local author to climb all 14ers in single weekend

Contributed by: T. Jones on 9/13/2007

Golden author Tom LaMarr has announced plans to climb all of Colorado's 14ers over a two-day period. "Either that," he adds, "or set up more area signings to promote my new book. The latter probably makes more sense, given the impossibility of climbing fifty-eight mountains in two days, especially for someone who's never hiked above 13,000 feet."

The book is Hallelujah City, out this month from UNM. LaMarr celebrated its release with a signing at the Boulder Book Store, two days after getting his first review. " Hallelujah City, like LaMarr's debut novel, October Revolution, is a fast and funny read," the Sunday Camera noted. "Humor isn't easy to pull off, but LaMarr does it effortlessly... Yet Hallelujah City is a melancholy novel, a meditation on mistakes that can never really be unmade. That tension, between laughter and tears, makes it deeper and more complex than many a New York Times bestseller."

Publishers Weekly weighed in a week later, concluding, "LaMarr has created a hectic, full-bodied account of a troubled young lady enmeshed in a bizarre religious cult... The plot is stocked with enough tension to hook readers until the chaotic, fiery climax."

"It was good to see these initial reviews," LaMarr says. "They describe the book I was hoping I'd written."

Hallelujah City took a long, at times circuitous route to completion. "Picking up an idea I'd been tinkering with, I started the book in earnest in 2000. Our daughter came along two years later, and during an extended period of sleep deprivation, I thought I had a great, commercial idea for a non-fiction parenting memoir. One of New York's top agents agreed, and we spent three years putting the book together and working hard to almost sell it. In the end, unfortunately, all we had to show for our efforts was a stack of rejection letters that read like nominations for some literary prize. Read it five times ... thought it was moving, funny ... but it needs a male audience, and men don't buy books. I was still fighting to salvage that book, when an author friend placed his second novel with UNM. Pleased with the support he was getting, he asked if I had anything I wanted to show them."

Although the manuscript for Hallelujah City still needed work, LaMarr was more than happy to let his friend hand carry a copy to New Mexico. The good news is that UNM not only accepted the book, but also gave LaMarr the ideal critique, providing direction he needed in order to resume work on Hallelujah City. "The other good news is that my agent didn't write me off after placing a novel without her. Our contract only covered the non-fiction book, and she likes the comedic novel I'm working on now."

It helped that LaMarr's first novel had received favorable reviews, along with endorsements from noted authors Thomas Gifford, Douglas Unger, and Joseph Heller. "Got back home and read your book with much ease, excitement, and pleasure," wrote the legendary Catch-22 author when contributing the least expected blurb of all time. "I found it a lighthearted, dandy satire with a humorous plot and a variety of deft pops at many deserving targets."

Hallelujah City tells the story of doomsday cult leader Daniel Hawker and the lives he disrupted. On the day after the world was prophesied to end, a father and daughter are looking for Hawker. Guided by very different motives, Scott and Mary Chambers must travel from Aurora, Colorado, to Hallelujah City, the cult's compound in upstate Minnesota. Whether justice, atonement, or a simple second chance, everything seems to be waiting there.

Or is it all just out of reach in this uncertain new world? Has time, as Hawker insists, truly run out? Ultimately, Hallelujah City succeeds on two levels: as a study of desperation in the wake of receding options, and as the complex, often tender story of a father and daughter in need of reconciliation.

Hallelujah City is available at most local stores, large chains included.


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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Submitted By: Nancy Hart
posted on 1/6/2008 @ 9:14:46 PM
Rated Story
Just received my copy in the mail and I can't put it down. When not reading, I'm thinking about the characters and where the story is going. Can't wait to reach "Hallelujah City"!!
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Submitted By: Ruth Jones
posted on 9/18/2007 @ 9:12:41 AM
Rated Story
I was one of the early readers of Hallelujah City, and I found it fascinating, and impossible to put down. A wonderfully told story!
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

T. Jones

Golden , CO

T. Jones has posted 1 story and 0 comments since joining on 9/12/2007. T. Jones 's average story rating is 5.
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