Fiction Trade Paperback
ISBN: 1-932961-15-1
6 x 9 / 400 Pages / $15.95 / April 2006
Fiction Hardcover
ISBN: 1-932961-06-2
6 x 9 / 320 Pages / $23.95 / May 2005
Summary | Praise | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Widgets | Bio | Events
In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for ... sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist's model.
When Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.
Following Mirabilis, her highly acclaimed debut, Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electrical stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American west.
A June 2005 Book Sense Notable!
"Cokal's storytelling blends the morbid and the titillating with imaginative exuberance….[T]he story of Famke’s quest…brings to mind the question Martin Amis asked of Lolita: how was it possible to limit her adventures to 'this 300-page blue streak—to something so embarrassingly funny, so unstoppably inspired, so impossibly racy?'"—The New York Times Book Review
"It’s almost impossible not to be amused, then intrigued and finally impressed with the heroine of Susann Cokal’s new novel, Breath and Bones….Cokal has a special gift for starting many of her chapters with lines that zing. Actually, each begins with some sort of quoted matter, but it is Cokal’s own prose that arrests….At various points in its narrative, Breath and Bones elicits laughter, empathy, shock. But Cokal pulls our strings while maintaining a consistent, authoritative voice; she is sure of herself without being arrogant or chilly. Essentially, this is a book about art, flesh and spirit — and Cokal delves into all three areas of her inquiry with wit but also heart." —John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star
"The story is a romp, in the tradition of Tom Jones, and a quinta-sensual novel with characters forever circling prey." —Pages Magazine
"The authorial voice of Susann Cokal is magnificent! This book is the second from an author, whose sense of detail, character, history and a certain kind of whimsicality, makes this a splendid read.…Undoubtedly Famke is one of immigrant literature's most independent characters….Cokal's work is imbued with rich historical detail reminiscent of the loving care to detail which author Mary Doria Russell does so well…One has only one word for this author of such talents - 'More!'" —New Ridge Reviews, from Lutheran Seminary College at Gettysburg
"Riveting." —Library Journal
"Hilarious, bawdy, and deliciously fun reading." —Barbara Hoagland, The King's English, Salt Lake City, Utah
"[W]ithin it lies a historical richness that is Cokal's greatest strength, and which she used just as well in her first novel, Mirabilis." —Megan Milks, PopMatters
"It's almost impossible not to be amused, then intrigued and finally impressed with the heroine of Susann Cokal’s new novel, Breath and Bones….Cokal has a special gift for starting many of her chapters with lines that zing. Actually, each begins with some sort of quoted matter, but it is Cokal's own prose that arrests….At various points in its narrative, Breath and Bones elicits laughter, empathy, shock. But Cokal pulls our strings while maintaining a consistent, authoritative voice; she is sure of herself without being arrogant or chilly. Essentially, this is a book about art, flesh and spirit—and Cokal delves into all three areas of her inquiry with wit but also heart." —John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star
"Cokal's rich language and ability to craft an intriguing tale and heroine will pull readers along as they hope for the heroine's happiness." —The Rocky Mountain News
"A poetic, comic, tragic, and surreal story of art, love, and searching." —Richmond Magazine
"Since her birth, Famke bewitches all those around her with her unique beauty. Sister Birgit favors Famke in the Danish orphanage; childhood friend Viggo saves Famke from scalding her hands in a pot of soap; lover Albert immortalizes Famke in a painting of Merlin's temptress Nimue. Albert soon abandons his muse, taking his masterpiece to London in search of recognition, leaving Famke to rely on her charms for help in finding him. She swiftly converts to Mormonism, convinces the leader to pay her passage, then promises him marriage. Her quest will take her to nineteenth-century American brothels, the Mormon utopia of Prophet City, and an experimental hospital for consumptives… Give to insatiable fans of historical fiction..." —Booklist
"It's quite a trick, lassoing the literary bounty of historical fiction, the sheer oddness of what people did and the words they used, and lashing it tight to a clever, irreverent, a la page voice. Susann Cokal has pulled that off in her second novel, Breath and Bones. Her language is fresh. It's bawdy. It's laugh-out-loud funny in parts. And if it's historically astute, do we care? This is fiction for fun." —The Durango Herald
"Another offbeat adventure from Cokal (Mirabilis, 2001), who sends a consumptive but dauntless Danish teenager across 1880s America in search of her lover…fun—in a kinky sort of way. An intriguing sophomore effort from a writer who definitely has her own unique voice." —Kirkus Reviews
"This steamy historical novel (Cokal's second, after Mirabilis) chronicles the adventures—sexual and otherwise—of its consumptive, red-haired heroine, Famke, from her childhood in a late 19th-century Copenhagen orphanage to her fate in the American Wild West. [A] …literary bodice-ripper…" —Publishers Weekly
"A big, passionate fun book full of twists and myths and a great heart. Escapism has never been so intelligent, inventive, or (s)heroic!!" —Sandra Scofield
"As a story, Breath and Bones is definitely unique. As wordsmith, Ms. Cokal is a standout. I literally devoured this book, enticed by her skill to keep reading from first page to last…Throughout, Ms. Cokal blends fascinating characters and locations, humor and history into a splendid tale of an amazing woman and her travels. And she accomplishes the telling of her story in grand style." —The Midwest Book Review
Susann Cokal is the author of the previous novel Mirabilis. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Famke was not a virtuous woman when she met Albert Castle. According to the Catholic precepts by which she'd been raised, she was no longer truly virginal, as she confessed to him in a bedtime conversation. Few orphan girls, even those raised by the good sisters of the Convent of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, could lay claim to that desirable state once they entered the wider world—and why should they bother to hold on to something that would be taken from them once they'd passed communion and were placed in service with some family inevitably headed by a prurient husband, a curious son, or a querulous grandfather who would have his way?
"Darling, you're so fierce," Albert said as he squeezed her.
"It is a fierce world," she said. "Overhovedet, especially, for a girl."
Besides, immured in her orphanage, Famke had found the idea of sin exciting. It offered the possibility of something other than what she had, something that must be at least pleasant, if not delicious, since the straight-backed nuns who had married Christ were so vehemently against it.
So Famke had taken sin into her own hands. The boys on the other side of the orphanage were just as curious as she, and intrigued by her interest. She courted them first through a crack in the wall separating boys' and girls' dormitories. This was during the exercise period, when the children were encouraged to enjoy fresh air and wholesome movement, trotting up and down two barren courtyards, occasionally playing desultory games of tag or statue around the lone elder tree in each one. Famke would lean into her wall and see an eye, almost always blue, peering back at her through the rubble and leaves. They would talk, whispering arrangements for rendezvous that, under the nuns' watchful glare, never came to pass. Once, Famke wormed her thin hand along the crack, and the boy on the other side (a Mogens, she believed, or maybe a Viggo—there were so many of both, arriving with those un-Catholic names pinned to their diapers so the good nuns felt bound to retain them) managed to reach just far enough in to touch the tip of one finger. The contact gave her a thrill she'd never known before, and for a good many months it was what she thought sin was, this furtive touch within a wall.