âAccordion Crimesâ is a masterpiece of story-telling that spans a century and a continent. It opens in 1890 in Sicily, when an accordion-maker and his son, carrying little more than his finest button accordion, begin their voyage to the teeming, violent port of New Orleans. Within a year, the accordion-maker is murdered by an anti-Italian lynch mob, but his instrument carries the novel into another community of immigrants: German-Americans founding a new town in South Dakota. Moving from South Dakota to Texas, from Montana to Maine, the nine instantly compelling and intricately connected sections of the novel illuminate the lives of the founders of a nation, descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Germans, Irish, Scots and Franco-Canadians. Through the music of the accordion they express their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance.
Annie Proulx published her first novel âPostcardsâ in 1991 at the age of 56. âThe Shipping Newsâ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award and the Irish Times International Prize. Her third novel, âAccordion Crimesâ, was published in 1996. She is also the author of three short-story collections, âHeart Songsâ (1994), âClose Rangeâ (1999) and âBad Dirtâ (2004). âBrokeback Mountainâ was made into an Oscar-winning film in 2005. âFine Just the Way It Isâ, her third collection of Wyoming short stories, was published in 2008.