Bellefleur

New York, NY: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1980 E.P. Dutton and Company, New York. 1980. Hardcover. Stated First Trade Edition/First Printing by Line Number. Signed by the author on the FFFP. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Very Good +; light shelfwear; light toning to textblock top. DJ: Very Good +; NOT Price Clipped ($12.95); small closed tear to bottom of front panel; light bumping to head. Maroon paper over boards with white cloth overlay on the spine with bright silver lettering on the spine. Maroon endpapers. Clean internals; internal hinges are sound and not split. 558 pp 8vo. A wealthy and notorious clan, the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch. Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery. A clean very presentable copy in a Brodart mylar jacket.