{"product_id":"the-bully-of-order-a-novel-isbn-9780062297754","title":"The Bully of Order: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eSet in a logging town on the lawless Pacific coast of Washington State at the turn of the twentieth century, a spellbinding novel of fate and redemption—told with a muscular lyricism and filled with a cast of characters Shakespearean in scope—in which the lives of an ill-fated family are at the mercy of violent social and historical forces that tear them apart.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKeen to make his fortune, Jacob Ellstrom, armed with his medical kit and new wife, Nell, lands in The Harbor—a mud-filled, raucous coastal town teeming with rough trade pioneers, sawmill laborers, sailors, and prostitutes. But Jacob is not a doctor, and a botched delivery exposes his ruse, driving him onto the streets in a plunge towards alcoholism. Alone, Nell scrambles to keep herself and their young son, Duncan, safe in this dangerous world. When a tentative reunion between the couple—in the company of Duncan and Jacob’s malicious brother, Matius—results in tragedy, Jacob must flee town to elude being charged with murder.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYears later, the wild and reckless Duncan seems to be yet another of The Harbor’s hoodlums. His only salvation is his overwhelming love for Teresa Boyerton, the daughter of the town’s largest mill owner. But disaster will befall the lovers with heartbreaking consequences.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd across town, Bellhouse, a union boss and criminal rabble-rouser, sits at the helm of The Harbor’s seedy underbelly, perpetuating a cycle of greed and violence. His thug Tartan directs his pack of thieves, pimps, and murderers, and conceals an incendiary secret involving Duncan’s mother. As time passes, a string of calamitous events sends these characters hurtling towards each other in an epic collision that will shake the town to its core.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWashington Territory, 1886\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJacob and Nell Ellstrom step from ship to shore and are struck dumb by the sight of their new home—the Harbor, a ragged township of mud streets and windowless shacks. With Jacob's station as the town's only physician, prosperity and respect soon rain down on the Ellstroms. Then their son, Duncan, is born, and these are grand days, busy and full of growth. But when a new physician arrives, Jacob is revealed as an impostor, a fraud, and he flees, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYears later, on a fated Fourth of July picnic, Duncan Ellstrom falls in love. Her name is Teresa Boyerton, and her father owns the largest sawmill in the Harbor. Their relationship is forbidden by class and by circumstance, because without Jacob there to guide him, Duncan has gone to work for Hank Bellhouse, the local crime boss. Now, if Duncan wants to be with Teresa, he must face not only his past but also the realities of a dark and violent world and his place within it.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“Brilliant… Hart paints a vivid picture of the brutality and venality of the old Northwest Territories.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAustin American-Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Brian Hart’s THE BULLY OF ORDER does what only the best works of fiction can do: it brilliantly imagines those parts of life that history all too often fails to record. This is a thoroughly engrossing story told in mesmerizing prose. I highly recommend it.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This crackling, lightning-bolt energy and patient attention to even the lowest of characters recalls the work of Denis Johnson…helped along by an energizing sense of humor and a virtuosic control of plot…Hart has created a Dickensian portrait of the barely settled Pacific Northwest.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Not a writer of half-measures, Hart brilliantly re-creates the rugged life in the Pacific Northwest logging camps of the 1890s. A riveting, powerful tale.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“THE BULLY OF ORDER possesses a strange magnetism…its irresistible, multi-layered plotline will tug you all the way through a story that captures the gritty lawlessness of the Northwest’s beginnings.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHigh Country News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A brilliant second novel… Hart’s prose is dense and lyrically savage.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An ambitious and beautifully harsh chronicle of family, love and deception. . . . A brilliant novel. Its huge scope and panoramic sympathies make it compelling and immersive…Hart’s echoes of Cormac McCarthy—the brutality of landscape and character, the unrelenting hardship—are just a fraction of his original successes here in scope, character and emotional magnitude.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDallas Morning News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A very robust story about where I’m living now, Oregon. It’s about sheer madness and effort that went into logging in that area of the country in the 1800s. It’s really an epic historical tale, and he’s a fantastic writer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSmith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The best book I read this year was Brian Hart’s THE BULLY OF ORDER. It is a dense, brilliant book, and-I don’t say this lightly-I suspect it will be seen as Hart’s first real contribution to the canon. Hart owes Cormac McCarthy in the same way that Cormac McCarthy owes William Faulkner. He’s that good…Hart is an incredible writer who will likely go down as one of the greats.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePhilipp Meyer, The Millions\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“After a relatively quiet debut, Brian Hart has come back with a stunning second novel-a work would qualify as a lifetime achievement for most writers. You do not have to read very far to see that Brian Hart has vaulted squarely into the first rank of American novelists.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePhilipp Meyer, author of The Son\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Brian Hart writes like a dream. In this haunting, often brutal tale of failed fathers and abandoned sons, set in the logging industry a century ago, are scenes of aching beauty.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJames Magnuson, author of The Hounds of Winter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What draws us into THE BULLY OF ORDER is the cadence of the writing which is dense but shapely, and anchored by poetic flourishes that ultimately lend the prose its profundity, weight, and grace. And then there are the metaphors, the whole system of figurative language and imagery that, alongside the mesmerizing style, work not so much to stamp the imagination as to stain it.  This is a severely atmospheric novel; it haunts not only because of its subject matter-a violent community of laborers on the coast of Washington State at the turn of the last century-but by its means. Hart is a conjurer, and he has conjured a singular, searing world. When you step into this novel you submit to its dream, which is terrifying. You read to the end because you trust the storyteller, you believe in his large gift that leaves you stunned and breathless. A wonderful, unique portrait of a particular landscape I was familiar with but now see anew.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAmanda Coplin, author of The Orchardist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“When you step into this novel you submit to its dream, which is terrifying. You read to the end because you trust the storyteller, you believe in his large gift that leaves you stunned and breathless. A wonderful, unique portrait of a particular landscape I was familiar with but now see anew.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAmanda Coplin, author of The Orchardist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An epic novel of violence, depravity, and mayhem…Brian Hart writes like Cormac McCarthy in overdrive. What talent, what nerve, what a wondrous and spellbinding book. THE BULLY OF ORDER is part creation myth, part apocalyptic thriller, and it’s peopled with charlatans, swindlers, and murderers who will haunt your dreams.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJohn Dufresne, author of No Regrets, Coyote\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hart’s sense of place is brilliant…There are dazzling characterizations…[and] a dense, deep and illuminating narrative…of greed and ambition and of fathers and sons…Think the brutal realities of McCarthy’s \u003cem\u003eBlood Meridian \u003c\/em\u003eset among the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest frontier.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44888208048357,"sku":"NP9780062297754","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062297754.jpg?v=1730228409","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-bully-of-order-a-novel-isbn-9780062297754","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}