Jeannie Burt Novels

2007-12-23T17:28:00.000-08:00

The Family Man

2007-12-22T21:13:00.001-08:00

"I used to think if you didn’t take a breath, or blink, or didn’t make any other kind of move, nothing would ever change, and you could hold onto that moment and that day, and you could count on it. But I came to learn you could hold your breath forever and it wouldn’t make one inch of difference. Looking back, I could blame everything on the storm. Only it wasn’t the storm, it was the times, and the way we lived, and the way we looked away when things weren’t what we wanted them to be."

Jack McIntyre is a farmer in remote northeastern Oregon. His story begins the day, in 1976, when a wild fifteen-year-old girl disappears from Jack’s small community. The girl was his daughter’s best friend and, as a young girl, the wild teen was like one of Jack’s family. Her life has not been easy. After the death of her father, her circumstances turned tremendously abusive and ugly and, as a teen-ager, she grew rebellious, sexy, loud and troublesome. When she vanishes, the community seems relieved, the town dusts its hands and says, Good riddance . Jack’s religious wife says, It is the will of the Lord Jesus Christ that she be punished for her sins.

But Jack cares deeply about the girl. The town’s attitudes, as well as and her mother’s, devastate Jack’s daughter. In spite of everyone else, Jack feels he must find the girl.

He does not know where to begin. At the Police station in Pendleton, he finds that no one has reported her missing. He fills out forms and begins a journey that will wrest him from his protected life of complacency and toss him in Montreal Canada and to the underbelly of life he could never have dreamed.

Praise for The Family Man:

"Jeannie Burt brings to her novel The Family Man a bone-deep understanding of and compassion for the lives of working farm families in the American West. It’s a rare enough thing, to encounter characters who are working farmers, rarer still to see them as figures of complexity, neither cliches nor caricatures; even more astonishing, that Jack McIntyre could stand in for any one of us, as his story echoes the actualities of all our modern lives. It’s a remarkably moving novel, heartbreaking and hopeful; there are scenes of great power; but what strikes me most about this novel is that is true, and real."
Molly Gloss, author, "The Hearts of Horses", "The Jump-Off Creek" , "Wild Life"

"In this remarkable novel, Jeannie Burt turns a keen eye to the modern West—its hard times and powerful characters. Facing weather that devastates his crops and a corrosive culture that threatens his teenaged daughter and her best friend, Jack McIntyre, a quiet rancher, must face change or lose everything he values. Set in the dramatic landscapes of Eastern Oregon and the seamy underside of Montreal, The Family Man celebrates a father’s love and responsibility while offering insight into the strength of the Western heart. Jeannie Burt’s important debut signals that another powerful voice has joined the chorus of outstanding women writing about the West."
Craig Lesley, author of "The Sky Fisherman" , "Winterkill" , and "Burning Fences"

The Family Man is being represented by Wales Literary Agency

2007-09-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

Easy
Jeannie's second novel is soon to be completed.

"How could I help but remember that day Mother and I left, the wind’s invisible fist threatening to throw us off the cart? How could I help but remember our laps wrapped in blankets, the hard wooden seat, the way the cold froze the rim of my nose, the hens clucking in the cage, the pony clopping along behind, the clumps of prairie grasses jarring us all? How could I help but remember the prickle of brown papers under our clothes, the cart loaded with our bedding, a sack half full of our few potatoes, a pot filled with unground corn, jars coddled in our pillows against breakage filled with food to see us through a few days? How could I not but remember the ache in my bent finger which I could not fit into a glove after Father’s last blow, nor the drained sallow of Mother’s cheeks? And how could I not remember the pale lift of my own joy?"

Recently rediscovered by art collectors, Robert Henri’s early Twentieth-Century art gave birth to what is now known as the Ashcan School. His art continues to influence the work of artists even today. Beginning with his father’s killing of a rancher on the barren prairie of Nebraska, Easy reveals Henri’s driven pursuit of art as a young man, blending fact and fiction, and interweaving Henri’s life with the lives of his struggling group of followers. Easy is told through the eyes of Ezekiel Harrington, an on-looker. Easy bears witness to the fight for equality of women at the turn of the century, to the vibrancy of early Philadelphia and it allows us into the incredible lives of artists who strove to elbow their ways out of Victorian mores and the confines of traditional art of the late Nineteenth century.

Jeannie is also doing research on her third novel which set in a time not long from now, in a time when the world no longer experiences hunger. The story examines our world crowded with humans whose numbers grow exponentially every month. And it examines the effect when one, lone scientist, decides to take Earth’s future into her own hands.