3 Review(s)

There has never been a hero quite like Romulus Ledbetter, a Juilliard-trained pianist who makes his home in a cave in New York's Inwood Park. There has never been a debut novelist quite like George Dawes Green with his singular gift for marrying malevolence with poetry, tragedy with uproariousness, and madness with lucidity. And there has never been a novel quite like The Caveman's Valentine, a rich, idiosyncratic achievement that is by turns suspenseful, deeply moving, and hilarious. Romulus Ledbetter wasn't always homeless. He once was a devoted husband, father, and musician with a bright future. He now forages for food in the trash cans of the city's better neighborhoods and wages a strenuous one-man war against Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant, an evil - and imaginary - power broker who is responsible for society's ills, as well as the sinister Y- and Z-rays that are corrupting humankind. Then one wintry night, Rom finds a corpse at the mouth of his cave that rouses his well-defined sense of ethics and lauches him on an obsessive quest for anwers. Forced to reconnect with society, Rom leaves his world and journeys through a spiraling web of clues and hunches, straight into a sinister den of money, temptation, and murder - otherwise known as the "civilized" world. Loaded with quirky humor, compelling mystery, and a touching, wildly unlikely hero, The Caveman's Valentine is a novel whose time has come, by a writer sure to leave his mark on contemporary literature.