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Making the Ghost Dance: A Novel by David Kranes
What should happen in life doesn't. What should not happen does. A trick that has run its course suddenly works! Life unfolds without words or warning. Peck was eleven when his father gave him a magic kit, thinking it would help him come out of himself. Little did Dad know how much Peck's life would be consumed by magic—that he would relegate school and family to lower rungs of his sense of priorities. There was much that Peck did not yet know—how life fails to respond to glib talk and sleight-of-hand, that it can be devastatingly disappointing even when everything you hope for materializes. Contrary to the magician's talent to make objects vanish and then reappear, friends and family can disappear without a curtain call, and the unscripted parts of life can be the most profound. David Kranes, a well-known Utah writer, brings these themes to the page with the skill and maturity of several decades of writing in a believable and captivating look at the Entitlement Generation.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2006
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August 10, 2023
I love that feeling you get when you are so into a book that you want to drop everything else and just read it. That doesn't happen very often for me, but it did happen with this book. It was a little frustrating because there were things I really needed to get done which I couldn't focus on because I wanted to get back into the book. But it was enjoyable nonetheless.
This is, in effect, the biography of a fellow named Peck. Oddly, we never learn his first name. At first, I just assumed Peck was his first name, but it became clearer once he had children and once they, in turn, had children, that Peck was the surname.
One of the things about this novel that is fun is that Peck isn't limited at all by reality. He truly is a magician who can make the inexplicable happen. The only thing he can't do, he tells his children, is bring back his loved ones from the dead, although he can, at important moments, conjure up their voices and images of them.
I'm not sure why I was so drawn to Jessica, Peck’s high school girlfriend. I was very happy to see her reappear at various times in his life. The loyalty they maintain to each other throughout their lives, even when both are married to other people, is endearing.
And I liked that Peck, at base, was a decent person who recognized that it was wrong to use his talents to take advantage of others. And I appreciated how he would go out of his way to make things right, often at his own expense, when he witnessed others being taken advantage of.
Another positive about Peck is that he is a good, loyal friend to those few people in his inner orbit, including Russell and JT and, later, his would-be biographer, whose name escapes me at the moment. And, of course, Leslie. He is even loyal to his old high-school cohort, Antony, who doesn’t deserve it.
One last observation: The book was published by Signature Books in Salt Lake City, which usually publishes books with a Mormon connection of some kind. I know David Kranes as a playwright who taught at the University of Utah. I have a book of his plays called David Kranes Selected Plays. He may well be Mormon, but there’s no hint of anything to do with Mormonism in the book, so it struck me as kind of an odd choice for Signature. Great book, though.
** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** **
Some quotes from the book for my own use later:
1- In reference to himself and his son in contrast to his father and his self, Peck muses: “What were they? What communication was there? Were they a better, a more promising father and son than Peck and Dr Peck? He couldn't tell.” -p 143
2- Peck’s father, a medical doctor, who is approaching the end of his career and questioning himself and his fellow physicians as he, for the first time, lies in a patient bed at his own hospital: “We are all frauds. We think we're the panther’s meow, but we're all hoaxes.” -p146
3- Peck and his wife, Victoria, name their twins Lee and Leigh. Leigh becomes a painter while Lee has culinary and musical talents. Years later, after Leigh’s death, Lee tries to finish her work. His father confronts him, and they have a conversation: “Whose paintings are these?” Peck asked. “Lee Peck’s”, Lee said, though it was impossible to know whether he'd said Lee or Leigh. -p194
This is, in effect, the biography of a fellow named Peck. Oddly, we never learn his first name. At first, I just assumed Peck was his first name, but it became clearer once he had children and once they, in turn, had children, that Peck was the surname.
One of the things about this novel that is fun is that Peck isn't limited at all by reality. He truly is a magician who can make the inexplicable happen. The only thing he can't do, he tells his children, is bring back his loved ones from the dead, although he can, at important moments, conjure up their voices and images of them.
I'm not sure why I was so drawn to Jessica, Peck’s high school girlfriend. I was very happy to see her reappear at various times in his life. The loyalty they maintain to each other throughout their lives, even when both are married to other people, is endearing.
And I liked that Peck, at base, was a decent person who recognized that it was wrong to use his talents to take advantage of others. And I appreciated how he would go out of his way to make things right, often at his own expense, when he witnessed others being taken advantage of.
Another positive about Peck is that he is a good, loyal friend to those few people in his inner orbit, including Russell and JT and, later, his would-be biographer, whose name escapes me at the moment. And, of course, Leslie. He is even loyal to his old high-school cohort, Antony, who doesn’t deserve it.
One last observation: The book was published by Signature Books in Salt Lake City, which usually publishes books with a Mormon connection of some kind. I know David Kranes as a playwright who taught at the University of Utah. I have a book of his plays called David Kranes Selected Plays. He may well be Mormon, but there’s no hint of anything to do with Mormonism in the book, so it struck me as kind of an odd choice for Signature. Great book, though.
** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** **
Some quotes from the book for my own use later:
1- In reference to himself and his son in contrast to his father and his self, Peck muses: “What were they? What communication was there? Were they a better, a more promising father and son than Peck and Dr Peck? He couldn't tell.” -p 143
2- Peck’s father, a medical doctor, who is approaching the end of his career and questioning himself and his fellow physicians as he, for the first time, lies in a patient bed at his own hospital: “We are all frauds. We think we're the panther’s meow, but we're all hoaxes.” -p146
3- Peck and his wife, Victoria, name their twins Lee and Leigh. Leigh becomes a painter while Lee has culinary and musical talents. Years later, after Leigh’s death, Lee tries to finish her work. His father confronts him, and they have a conversation: “Whose paintings are these?” Peck asked. “Lee Peck’s”, Lee said, though it was impossible to know whether he'd said Lee or Leigh. -p194
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