{"title":"R. C. Binstock","description":"I started writing stories around age eight. At Harvard I studied writing with Ann Beattie, Monroe Engel, and Grace Mojtabai. My story collection THE LIGHT OF HOME was published by Atheneum in 1992, and my novels TREE OF HEAVEN and THE SOLDIER by Soho in 1995 and 1996. My writing career was interrupted in the late 1990s. The publication of my novel SWIFT RIVER in 2014, my own edition of TREE OF HEAVEN in 2015, and NATIVE CHILD in 2016 represent my renewed effort to write and be read. I have lived in Cambridge, Mass for since 1976. Learn more about my books at http: \/\/rcbinstock.com.","products":[{"product_id":"tree-of-heaven-paperback","title":"Tree of Heaven - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe year is 1938. The Japanese army has occupied Nanking. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eKuroda, a reluctant officer trained as a botanist, is left in charge of a garrison town. When he comes upon a starving, filthy Chinese refugee about to be raped by his soldiers, a common occurrence, he does the remarkable: he rescues her and gives her his protection. Li has no choice but to accept it; she becomes his servant, and an extraordinary intimacy ensues. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePsychologically taut, etched in spare, compelling prose, a deep yet dynamic novel of safety and risk, guilt and captivity, power and love. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePublished by R.C. Binstock Books in a new author's edition.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67576375869663,"sku":"9781505914238","price":14.83,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/xTk9JKdP6c9781505914238.webp?v=1790380365"},{"product_id":"the-vanished-paperback-2","title":"The Vanished - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1998, two families grieve a stunning loss; in 1848, a painter contends with revolution and adversity while resisting the call of home. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTHE VANISHED is an extended exploration of absence-absence by death, absence by choice, all the absences that inevitably become part of our lives. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the late 20th century two families, one in America and the other in Britain, struggle to recover from the sudden and shattering loss of three common members in an airplane explosion. The brother and uncle of the vanished, a sculptor called Malcolm, maps his way forward through his passion for a stranger and his devotion to a painting by the nineteenth-century French artist Jean François Millet. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn his own time, Millet himself manages, year after year-through bad times and good, failure and success-to stay away from his childhood home in Normandy, whose landscape and people inspire his artistic vision. Only when his grandmother, then his mother, and finally his last remaining sister pass from the world is he able to return. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAbove all, this novel concerns itself with grief-as a journey but also a destination and a starting place, as an affliction that ultimately provides its own antidote. The characters of THE VANISHED all pine for absent family members but for each, recovery is defined by the idiosyncratic manner in which they pine, their own special and inimitable approach to grief.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68073701998815,"sku":"9781727023190","price":14.83,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/xkT3ETQvqV9781727023190.webp?v=1792299117"},{"product_id":"swift-river-paperback-1","title":"Swift River - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eBoston needs water. The engineers know where to find it. But four towns stand in their way ... \u003cbr\u003e \"I am entirely a creature of my life's sad events, committed to patience now, to endurance if nothing else. I am a part of my surroundings and they are all contained in me. Girl expecting the water.\" - Polly McPhee, Greenwich, Massachusetts, 1934 \u003cbr\u003e Swift River is the story of Polly McPhee, a native of Greenwich, a small central Massachusetts town condemned with three others in 1927 to create a permanent supply of clean water for the people of Boston. One of the most successful and cost-effective civil engineering projects in history, the Quabbin Reservoir secured fresh water for millions by drowning the Swift River Valley, once home to the Nipmuc and then to generations of farmers, merchants, artisans, and mill workers. \u003cbr\u003e As the start of this intimate yet far-reaching novel, Polly is a 12 year old girl who sees the water project as an especially unfair aspect of an adult world that rarely makes sense to her anyway. As she matures, discovering new joys and suffering a series of profound personal losses, Polly comes to understand that ultimately all of our pasts and memories must be drowned and erased from sight, as thoroughly as Greenwich will be. Over time the project assumes an ever more complex and significant role in Polly's life and universe, ultimately becoming a dangerous but powerful ally in her path to survival and redemption.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68194984165599,"sku":"9781501097249","price":18.88,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/w_pkdFNYFh9781501097249.webp?v=1792540344"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/r-c-binstock.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}