Product Description

Sam Adams, a professional cartographer, tries to come to terms with his disintegrating life when his wife leaves him and he discovers that his son is dabbling in pyromania

From Publishers Weekly

With authority and humor, this first novel charts a course through the life of a cartographer who maps the universe with a computer and sketches regions of the sea on woven palm fronds. When his wife leaves with the children, Sam Adams is alone for the first time in many years. Pamela, his wife, a photographer who experiments with holograms and the printed word, wants to be a force for a better world. Sam's wishes are simpler, or so he believes. He'd like to see his kids more often; he'd like the stranger who stalks his yard to stay away; and, although aware of random forces at work in his life, he'd like to believe in a rational universe. Sam, who also plays the drums with a local band one night a week, is philosophical and sensitive, unburdened by resentment and, even so, an absolutely believable character with an emotional life as rich in magic, wonder and artistry as an ancient map of a mythical land. On an assignment in the Antarctic, he suffers a near-fatal accident during which he abandons his passivity and claims the unknown as his own. Sam thinks of himself as a mapmakera career with an intriguing vocabulary and metaphorical possibilities with which Daughterty is deliciously generous but he's also a courageous explorer of the contemporary frontiers of the interior. This is a deft and intriguing debut.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this first novel, Sam Adamscartographer, sometimes jazz drummer, and Man of the Eightiesis worked over by a cast of significant others in his private and professional life. His wife leaves him, taking their rebellious son and superserious daughter; his boss responds to his plea for a foreign assignment by sending him to Antarctica; neither of his girlfriends takes him seriously. Meanwhile, the kind neighborhood widow wants to feed him spaghetti and read his fortune while a co-worker, Adams suspects, is spying on his house. In his first novel, Daugherty's prose tends to overdrawn cleverness. The minor characters promise to be more engaging than is the protagonist, and one wonders why Adams should be the one to have his story told. Large fiction collections may want to add this; others should wait until Daugherty polishes his evident talent. Francisca Goldsmith, Golden Gate Univ. Lib., San Francisco, Cal.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.