The Sourtoe Cocktail Club: The Yukon Odyssey of a Father and Son in Search of a Mummified Human Toe ... and Everything Else

by Ron Franscell

Overview

A father-and-son love story set against epic backdrops and overlooked places After Ron Franscell's divorce, he feared he was the continuing link in a long chain of estranged fathers. But when the author and his teenage son embark on a road trip to the Yukon to seek out a macabre cocktail containing an amputated human toe, they unwittingly begin a journey into their own past, present and future. The Sourtoe Cocktail Club is a true-life love story about fathers and sons, set against epic backdrops and overlooked places. It is also a road book that attempts to answer, for one father and son, a pivotal life question: Where does the road go?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762771561
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/04/2011
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ron Franscell is a rising true-crime figure, a seasoned traveler and a Texan. Ron has ridden the wide range between journalism, fiction and nonfiction with extraordinary success. Ron’s third book, an intimate nonfiction originally entitled Fall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town, was published in January 2007 and reissued in paperback in 2008 as The Darkest Night, established him as one of the most provocative new voices in narrative nonfiction.

Editorial Reviews

"So much more than a father-son odyssey—with a Charles Kuralt-like eye for the off-beat, whimsical and downright bizarre, Ron Franscell spins one masterful tale after another within the framework of a trip to the Yukon. My favorite, the story of man who stands on a street corner for seventeen years, inspires me to begin a search of my own to discover the fate of Spooky Boots."— W. P. Kinsella, renowned author of Shoeless Joe (which became the movie Field of Dreams) "Seriously funny, earthily cosmic—how does Ron Franscell do it? The Sourtoe Cocktail Club is a world-beater of a tale of the father-son odyssey to the farthest reach of road and heart."—Ivan Doig, author of This House of Sky "Sourtoe is a splendid father-and-son odyssey into some of the very last of North America's fast-shrinking wilderness. Ron Franscell's beautifully written memoir is the story of a man's determination to give his beloved son a truly memorable gift that he will never forget: a journey not just into the wild, but into a dark and astonishing family history from which their hilarious, moving, and searingly honest road trip may emancipate them both. I would rank The Sourtoe Cocktail Club with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and A River Runs Through It in its originality and its narrative exploration of what it means, in our era, to be a father and a son. In the end, like all great books, Sourtoe is a story about the power of love."—Howard Frank Mosher, bestselling author of A Stranger in the Kingdom and Walking to Gatlinburg "It's an odd and melancholy dance, this thing between fathers and sons. Ron Franscell writes with heart-breaking honesty about things the rest of us can barely articulate. Rarely have I read anything as moving about walking that tightrope between love and regret."—William McKeen, bestselling author of Highway 61: A Father-and-Son Journey Through the Middle of America "A stirring meditation on life and love and relationships. Part memoir and part travelogue, The Sourtoe Cocktail Club is an extraordinary odyssey that spans generations and miles, leading us through Panama and Texas and the Yukon, through tears and laughter and the self-discovery of fathers and sons. . . . The Sourtoe Cocktail Club is a road bumpy and gritty and real, a road lined with old movies and heavy metal, a road of disappointments past and dreams of things to come, a road beside which campfires crackle with history and music and books, a road where Jack London points the way toward the Arctic Circle, a tin box, and a mummified toe. It is eloquent and funny, sometimes touching and sometimes sad, a journey lit brightly with insight and wit as Franscell and his son Matt complete an epic journey together, trying to close the distance between them as they make their way through Valhalla and across the Toad River to the land of the midnight sun and their ultimate objective, The Toe: a destination no reader will soon forget. I don't know how Franscell wrote this book, but I'm glad he did. —David W. Ball, author of Empires of Sand and China Run

From the Publisher

Divorced after a 20-year marriage, true crime author Franscell (Delivered from Evil) hoped to reconnect with his teenage son on a road trip. He planned a journey via RV to the Yukon Territory to visit a saloon that serves up a cocktail containing a mummified human toe. Franscell writes of his fears that he will become his own father, who deserted the family when he was a baby and is now living in Panama as a character with a shady past. The dream trip of a lifetime was beset with troubles—unforeseen extra charges for the RV, seriously bad roads on the way to the Yukon, and a surly son who blasted death metal music to his father's annoyance. The sourtoe cocktail is almost a letdown. VERDICT Readers of Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will enjoy this story of a father and son on a journey, which is not as much about travel as life, family, and love. It should appeal to a wide audience.—Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI

Library Journal

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