Bill Roorbach

From Publisher’s Weekly
September 10, 2001

THE SMALLEST COLOR
Bill Roorbach. Counterpoint, $25
(336 p) ISBN 1-58243-152-3

Roorbach has quietly built a stellar reputation based on short fiction(Big Bend, winner of the Flannery O'connor Award) and nonfiction (Writing Life Stories, Summers with Juliet), but has escaped wider notice -- perhaps because he hadn't produced a novel. Now he has, and it's a good one. Coop Henry is a former Olympic skier, a man steering his way through what most would call a good life -- he's a coach with the U.S. Ski Team; has a smart, beautiful wife, Madeline; and lives along a Colorado river straight out of a magazine spread. Problem is, the hazy days of the late '60s keep coming back to him, especially the summer of 1969, when Coop was 15 and his older brother, Hodge, and underground radical, disappeared forever. Coop knows that Hodge is dead, but exactly how that death occurred overwhelms Coop with the past, even as his current life disintegrates. Complicating things, he has kept the news of Hodge's death from his parents for 30 years, telling them that Hodge is hiding from the FBI. It's hard to know who's a better creation: Coop, a thoughtful man in search of wholeness or Hodge, all charisma and violence, "someone who'd get in bed with your girl." Roorbach is equally at home among the ski bums of the present day and the hippie bums of a previous era, especially those who wanted to "Stop the War" by starting their own. This is a piercing novel, one that perfectly captures the seismic upheaval of the end of the '60s (Oct)

Forecast: A long list of blurbers -- Colin Harrison, Rick Moody, Richard Russo, Antonya Nelson and Melanie Rae Thon among them -- attest to Roorbach's popularity in literary circles. His first novel may win him a wider popular readership.

THE SMALLEST COLOR
Bill Roorbach

Coop Henry's terrible secret about his older brother, Hodge, is eating up his life. In Bill Roorbach's extraordinary first novel about two brothers--one alive, one presumed missing--the thirty-year secret that has kept Coop bound in silence is threatening to burst.

What really happened to Hodge Henry in the summer of 1969, the last time he was seen by his parents? Coop certainly knows, but has managed to keep up a decades-long charade that has fooled everyone. But the effort has had a cost. His marriage is faltering. His coaching job with the US ski team is in jeopardy. And when his mother threatens to hire a detective in one last, vain attempt to retrieve her missing son, Coop begins to crack.

Added to the pressure on Coop is a budding relationship with Veronica, one of Coop's skiers. She's young enough to give Coop pause, compelling enough in mind and body to convince him to act, even if it means losing his job, his home, and his secret.

The Smallest Color is the story of Coop's attempt to remember the past, that devastating summer of 1969 when everything seemed possible, when his brother, the brutal Hodge Henry, was still alive. Like Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral, Roorbach's The Smallest Color explores the sixties when radical acts threatened to destroy a domestic bliss we may have had no claim to. Alternating between then and now, the two brilliant cables of the novel interweave the past and present into a portrait of time itself in this unforgettable story of brotherly love and loss.

"The energetic rhythm of Roorbach's language, by turns wry and lyrical, captures the confused rush of being young, of suddenly doing instead of watching. And Roorbach vividly dramatizes the adult embarrassment of cracking up. Roorbach doesn't simply shuttle us between Coop's current unhappiness and his teenage secrets. He heightens the novel's suspense in both the past and the present, varying the chapter lengths, tightening the circle as violence sparks. Without giving too much away, there is a bombing, some shooting, and an appalling sense of dread. In such scenes Roorbach has few equals, even among veteran suspense writers. But this mastery of suspense is just one of the talents he uses to construct a novel that instantly demands your attention and holds it until the surprisingly sweet conclusion."
--The Boston Globe

"Bill Roorbach knows that the most terrible of secrets are the ones we hold most tightly to ourselves, no matter what the cost. He knows also why men love women, why women love men, why families grieve yet endure, and why the past is very much part of the present. He is a wise and beautiful writer and The Smallest Color marks his debut as a novelist we must read." Colin Harrison

"I've admired Bill Roorbach's voice for a long time. He is a writer who is full of compassion and warmth for his subjects, and he's funny as hell too. We're lucky to have new work from him." Rick Moody

"It's been a while since I read a novel as greedily as [this]. Full of dark suspense, wonderfully playful writing and people worth worrying yourself sick over, it's a richly satisfying read." Richard Russo

"A gripping novel about the unhealed wounds and unfinished business of the sixties. It has the energy and pacing of a thriller--but Bill Roorbach's writing is also notable for its warmth, its sensitivity to women, and its irresistible bad boy charm." Joyce Johnson

"[A] fast-paced, funny, dark first novel ... Gradually, the entwining tales join--strands of the present and past, the 45- and the 15-year-old, time and memory, the '60s and the '90s, sadness and anger and love and guilt, are woven into whole cloth." Judith Long, Newsday

"[A] deeply felt debut novel ..." Kera Bolnick, Bookforum

"[A] superb first novel ..." Anna Mundow, The Boston Globe

"Roorbach has quietly built a stellar reputation based on short fiction and nonfiction, but has escaped wider notice -- perhaps because he hadn't produced a novel. Now he has, and it's a good one ... This is a piercing novel, one that perfectly captures the seismic upheaval of the end of the '60's." Publishers Weekly

"Roorbach effectively juggles a number of themes in a slyly composed whodunit that's also a paean to burying the bones of the past ... Roorbach builds an engaging portrait of the '60's, it's free-love and drug experiments, the naïve innocence of some and the restless violence of others ... Well-drawn characters and a topical theme make this a lively read." Kirkus Reviews

"Both unsettling and powerful ... A compelling coming-of-middle-age novel." Connie Fletcher, Booklist

"This first novel brilliantly and compassionately recalls the turbulence of the Sixties as well as the violent yet idealistic fringes of the antiwar movement." Library Journal