Come Sunday

by Bradford Morrow

A densely layered journey into the dark heart of the American Dream that spans continents and centuries
In Bradford Morrow’s debut novel, lightning-tongued mercenary Peter Krieger travels to Nicaragua to kidnap a man who may be a 480-year-old former conquistadorâ and therefore could hold the secret to immortality. When Krieger attempts to sell his captive to a reclusive scientist in upstate New York, he sets off on a globe-spanning expedition, in which he encounters an enormous cast of idealists, crackpots, and revolutionaries. And his one-time lover, Hannah Burden, who raises cattle in an illegal loft ranch in Manhattan, still stands between him and his nefarious, astonishing ambitions. A rousingly hilarious, yet tragic epic about the dark side of the American Dream, Come Sunday is fueled by Morrow’s captivating style, breadth of reference, and depth of insight, and spins old myths of the New World into unexpected and haunting forms.

416 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1988

About the author

Bradford Morrow has lived for the past thirty years in New York City and rural upstate New York, though he grew up in Colorado and lived and worked in a variety of places in between. While in his mid-teens, he traveled through rural Honduras as a member of the Amigos de las Americas program, serving as a medical volunteer in the summer of 1967. The following year he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his last year of high school as a foreign exchange student at a Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1973, he took time off from studying at the University of Colorado to live in Paris for a year. After doing graduate work on a Danforth Fellowship at Yale University, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, to work as a rare book dealer. In 1981 he relocated to New York City to the literary journal Conjunctions, which he founded with the poet Kenneth Rexroth, and to write novels. He and his two cats divide their time between NYC and upstate New York.

Visit his website at www.bradfordmorrow.com.

Reviews

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come Sunday was the debut novel by Bradford Morrow published in 1988. This book exploded in all of its grandeur and myriad threads with history beginning even before the first permanent Spanish settlements began appearing along the Honduran coast in 1524, the famous conquistador Hernando Cortes dispatched his most trusted lieutenant, Olid to set up a colony in Honduras. But when explorers under the command of Olid made their way along the coast around the Yucatan Peninsula down through the Gulf of Honduras coming into the Bahia de Omoa where there was a sufficiency of fish and game, groves of bananas and fertile soil for crops. It was here that Olid ordered his men begin a settlement they called Naco. It is this traitor, the conquistador Cristobal de Olid that is at the center of this book amid centuries of history as this book continues to unfold in concentric circles, each time a wider swath as one learns more about the characters and their motivations.

The bookcover of my autographed copy by Bradford Morrow sums this book best:

"With an uncanny variety of narrative strategies and sheer good stories, 'Come Sunday' leads us on an intense, momentous journey--from the jungles of Nicaragua to those of Manhattan, from the Nebraska flatlands to the Hudson Valley--in quest of an elusive, and sometimes illusive, place called home. As daring in conception as it is in execution, with a solidity of handling, a sureness of rhythm, and a clarity of structure that far surpass our expectations for a 'first novel.' 'Come Sunday' is a remarkable literary debut, a bold, unforgettable tale about the modern American myth that we are entitled to live forever."