Krivak captures the terror and tenderness of [the miners’] ordeal, and he builds to an ending of exceptional catharsis. This novel is a stunner.
Mule Boy
On New Year’s Day, 1929, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface. After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed.
From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. But, years later, when the miners’ loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black.
Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live.
NPR “Book of the Day” selection
PopMatters “Picks” selection
Christian Science Monitor “Best Books of the Month” selection
BookBrowse “New and Notable Books” selection
Literary Hub “Most Anticipated Books” selection
Center for Fiction “Book Recommendations” selection
Gibson’s Bookstore Staff Pick
Unabridged Bookstore Staff Pick
Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library “Book of the Week” selection
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781954276475
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781954276468
Andrew Krivak discusses Mule Boy with Scott Simon on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday and shares more of the story behind the novel on Open Book and at The Hobbyist.
Tune in to Andrew Krivak’s playlist for Mule Boy at Largehearted Boy.
Read excerpts from Mule Boy at Bloom, Literary Hub, and Pittsburgh Review of Books.
Andrew Krivak is an award-winning writer whose books include Mule Boy; The Bear, a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection; and the freestanding novels of the Dardan Trilogy: The Sojourn, a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize; The Signal Flame, a Chautauqua Prize finalist; and Like the Appearance of Horses, a Library Journal “Best Book of the Year” and Indie Next List for Reading Groups selection. He is a discussion facilitator with the Family Connections Center, New Hampshire Department of Corrections, and visiting lecturer on English at Harvard University. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
visit author page »Praise for Mule Boy
Atmospheric and evocative.
— Historical Novels Review
Descending into the coal mines of Pennsylvania in the early part of the twentieth century, Andrew Krivak has come up with a diamond. Mule Boy is both mesmerizing and emotionally shattering. Its beautiful, hypnotic, lyrical prose, often reminiscent of the scriptures, casts a spell so profound that you will not want to break out of it.
— Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others and Choice
Andrew Krivak is one of contemporary fiction’s finest architects of the line, and I am utterly swept away by his lyric, daring, and kinetic music. Mule Boy is a riveting exploration of the ghosts we carry coiled within us—and what is unleashed when they leap out into the present. This book is as brilliant and sure as a bolt of lightning.
— Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel and State of Paradise
Sometimes you hold a writer so close you want them all to yourself. Andrew Krivak has been that writer for me and his Mule Boy blazes so brightly it has already become, in my life, a great constellation. This novel is bewitching sorcery, a total wonder, a raging fever dream that sings and bellows and captures the entirety of our lives—all the things we fear and love and let go of and win back and cherish the most. It should, and will, stand alongside the works of Roberto Bolaño, Marilynne Robinson, and Denis Johnson. Here is a tale for our times, for all time.
— Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters and The Hive and the Honey
Riveting. Incredibly hard read in gorgeous prose that makes you want to keep on reading.
— Nadia Alawa, Mavey Books (Ardmore, PA)
[Krivak] has once again given us his heart and soul in writing this story.
— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)
On top of the crazy emotional journey [Mule Boy] takes you on, the prose is also just so fantastic—and I had high expectations, because Krivak’s The Bear has some of my favorite pieces of prose ever. . . . His writing really is singular.
— Sophie Concannon, Powell’s Books (Portland, OR)
Krivak’s prose is stunning, his pacing masterful. . . . There are so many instances where I had to catch my breath or my eyes would fill with tears. I truly have not read a book so skillfully told with such exquisite prose in a very long time. Mule Boy is flawless.
— Lillian Dabney, Seattle Athenaeum (Seattle, WA)
[A] compassionate meditation. . . . Krivak continues to write about dark times with a celebration of the strength of the human spirit.
— Melanie Fleishman, Center for Fiction Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)
This gorgeous book will keep surprising and amazing you. . . . The goodness of humanity shines through Krivak’s characters during even the most challenging of circumstances.
— Amanda Grell, Pearl’s Book (Fayetteville, AR)
Gently written in an exquisite poetic style.
— Anne Lyndon Peck, Lakeville Books & Stationery (Lakeville, CT and Great Barrington, MA)
For such a slim novel, Mule Boy packs a much bigger punch. The story of a mine collapse, told by a survivor who has spent his life dealing with the question of how to go on. Emotionally rich in its simplicity and understatement.
— Gwen Papp, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
A perfect book. Mule Boy reads like a hymn, mournful and exuberant. Krivak has proven himself an essential author in the modern American literary canon.
— Emily Tarr, Thank You Books (Birmingham, AL)