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Missile Paradise
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Average Rating
Published:
IG Publishing 2016
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description

In the Marshall Islands, an island-nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was once a testing ground for nuclear bombs, American engineers and programmers are making and testing missiles while their "hosts," the indigenous Marshallese, sweep their streets and clean their houses. It's 2004, the Iraq war is heating up, and 9/11 is fresh in everyone's minds. Following four interconnected story lines—the meltdown of a burned-out cultural liaison who has "gone native" and bitterly resents his role in keeping the Marshallese down; a young programmer who has lost his leg in a reckless solo sailing journey; the struggles of a young widow with two children whose husband drowned in a mysterious diving accident; and the destructive spiral of a Marshallese teenager whose American girlfriend rejects him when she returns to the States—Missile Paradise is an epic, heartbreaking, and satirical novel about the clash of cultures between the Americans trying to realize their American Dream in this seeming paradise, and the Marshallese who are both angered and bedazzled by that dream.

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
03/21/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781632460127
ASIN:
B01CN2LRRW
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Ron Tanner. (2016). Missile Paradise. IG Publishing.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Ron Tanner. 2016. Missile Paradise. IG Publishing.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Ron Tanner, Missile Paradise. IG Publishing, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Ron Tanner. Missile Paradise. IG Publishing, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Grouped Work ID:
c095d185-93a6-f898-a5b0-e7ffb2f09dc7
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Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:03:48
Date Updated:
Jun 12, 2018 18:03:48
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 09:32:19
Last Metadata Change:
Jun 04, 2023 14:22:24
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 09:32:22
Last Availability Change:
Nov 09, 2022 20:28:01
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

OverDrive Product Record

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        Ron Tanner's awards for writing include a Faulkner Society gold medal, a Pushcart Prize, a New Letters Award, a Best of the Web Award, a Maryland Arts Council grant, and many others. He is the author of A Bed of Nails (stories), Kiss Me Stranger (illustrated novel), and From Animal House to Our House (memoir). He teaches writing at Loyola University-Maryland and directs the Marshall Islands Story Project.

      • name: Ron Tanner
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title
Missile Paradise
fullDescription

In the Marshall Islands, an island-nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was once a testing ground for nuclear bombs, American engineers and programmers are making and testing missiles while their "hosts," the indigenous Marshallese, sweep their streets and clean their houses. It's 2004, the Iraq war is heating up, and 9/11 is fresh in everyone's minds. Following four interconnected story lines—the meltdown of a burned-out cultural liaison who has "gone native" and bitterly resents his role in keeping the Marshallese down; a young programmer who has lost his leg in a reckless solo sailing journey; the struggles of a young widow with two children whose husband drowned in a mysterious diving accident; and the destructive spiral of a Marshallese teenager whose American girlfriend rejects him when she returns to the States—Missile Paradise is an epic, heartbreaking, and satirical novel about the clash of cultures between the Americans trying to realize their American Dream in this seeming paradise, and the Marshallese who are both angered and bedazzled by that dream.

reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Booklist (Starred Review)
      • content:

        "Tanner...brings this microcosm of human folly and valor to captivating realization with bracing insights, tangy humor, profound respect, and rebounding resonance."

      • premium: False
      • source: Kirkus
      • content: "The themes here are major--global warming, imperialism, America's role in the world (the story is set soon after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal). But Tanner displays a light touch, favoring snappy dialogue over didacticism. The result is winning."
      • premium: False
      • source: Publishers Weekly
      • content: "Tanner...is at his best when depicting the very human flaws, obsessions, and prejudices his characters face, all against a vivid island background where summer never seems to end and social progress is at a standstill."
      • premium: False
      • source: Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog
      • content: "A moving, ethnologically brilliant tale of imperialism and insularity, this is one of those rare novels that actually opens our eyes. Wonderful stuff."
      • premium: False
      • source: Julia Glass, winner of the National Book Award, author of Three Junes
      • content: "Ron Tanner's imagination astounds me. It's been a long time since I've met a group of characters as uniquely flawed and uniquely enthralling as those who populate his fabulously tragicomic novel MISSILE PARADISE. You will follow them to the ends of the earth to find out what happens--and I mean that just about literally."
      • premium: False
      • source: Bob Shacochis, National Book Award winner, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
      • content: "Ron Tanner is a gripping and transformative writer and Missile Paradise is exactly the sort of novel I want to read, stepping away from America to look back at it with a fresh set of eyes and recalibrate the lens through which we define who we are."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        April 11, 2016
        The three close but not completely connected story lines in Tanner's latest novel center on the Marshall Islands after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., and the intersecting lives of the native Marshallese people and the Americans stationed there. Living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean might sound like paradise, but the reality for Tanner's characters is a lot bleaker. The island nation is a place of post-colonial struggle, with 30% unemployment and one of the highest suicide rates in the world. As if nuclear warfare and global warming aren't threatening enough, cultural tensions between the Americans and the natives are getting worse. Cooper, a computer programmer assigned to work on nuclear defense systems, loses his leg in a freak sailing accident before his first day on the job. Alison, an alcoholic widow with two young sons, questions whether she will ever return to the U.S. while holding onto hope that the body of her drowned husband will eventually be found. Jeton is a teenage island native who feels his world has ended when his American girlfriend leaves him for college and a better future. Tanner (From Animal House to Our House) is at his best when depicting the very human flaws, obsessions, and prejudices his characters face, all against a vivid island background where summer never seems to end and social progress is at a standstill.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        February 1, 2016
        A chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific provides the backdrop for Tanner's (From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story, 2012, etc.) comic exploration of expatriate life and its consequences. In the 1950s, the U.S. used the Marshall Islands as a test site for nuclear bombs. Fifty years later, the Americans in Tanner's breezy tale are more self-destructive than anything, though their imprint on the island nation is hardly a net positive. For better or worse, they stick mostly to American-dominated Kwajalein, which "looks like a 1950s cinderblock beach town gone to seed" and houses the U.S. personnel who study missile defense at the nearby Ronald Reagan Test Site. Among the employees there is Cooper, who sails all the way from California for his new job but manages to lose a leg in the process. Alison, the art teacher at the Kwajalein high school, isn't much better off: she's coping with her husband's recent drowning, mostly by drinking her way through lunch. Then there's Art, a bedraggled former Peace Corps volunteer who married a native and now serves as "Cultural Liaison" to the expat community, explaining Marshallese customs while lobbing rhetorical grenades at American culture from afar. Meanwhile, the only Marshallese protagonist, Jeton, pines for his American girlfriend, Nora, who's preparing to return to the U.S. for college. Marshallese are banned from Kwajalein after nightfall, and Jeton's attempt to see Nora before she goes proves a crucial turning point in the plot. The themes here are major--global warming, imperialism, America's role in the world (the story is set soon after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal). But Tanner displays a light touch, favoring snappy dialogue over didacticism. The result is winning, though for some the novel may feel just a touch too lighthearted: at various points characters confront everything from alcoholism to catastrophic weather to sharks, but one gets the sense early on that, for the four major players, all will (mostly) work out in the end. A literary beach read that will keep you thinking after the vacation's over.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from April 1, 2016
        Tanner's high-adrenaline, piquantly funny, bad-to-worse novel is set in the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs between 1946 and 1958, subjecting the Marshallese to the unending consequences of nuclear fallout. It's 2004 at the start of this tale of cultural dissonance, hubris, anger, loss, and resiliency, and Cooper, a talented video-game programmer, is about to join a missile-defense group on the island of Kwajalein, a military stronghold on which Marshallese are not allowed after dark. But he has a freak accident after sailing alone across the Pacific from California, following a rift with his fiancee, and begins his stay on Kwajalein in rehab after losing a leg. A bizarre diving mishap has left Alison widowed with two young sons. Jeton, an impulsive Marshallese teenager jilted by his American girlfriend, propels himself into deep trouble. And Art, the flinty cultural liaison, fights discrimination against the Marshellese. In this poisoned island paradise besieged by poverty, disease, and rising sea levels precipitated by global warming, each irresistibly self-embattled character makes grievous mistakes, suffers from regret, and plunges into disaster. Tanner (From Animal House to Our House, 2012), who lived in the Marshall Islands and launched the Marshall Islands Story Project, brings this microcosm of human folly and valor to captivating realization with bracing insights, tangy humor, profound respect, and rebounding resonance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

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shortDescription

In the Marshall Islands, an island-nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was once a testing ground for nuclear bombs, American engineers and programmers are making and testing missiles while their "hosts," the indigenous Marshallese, sweep their streets and clean their houses. It's 2004, the Iraq war is heating up, and 9/11 is fresh in everyone's minds. Following four interconnected story lines—the meltdown of a burned-out cultural liaison who has "gone native" and bitterly resents his role in keeping the Marshallese down; a young programmer who has lost his leg in a reckless solo sailing journey; the struggles of a young widow with two children whose husband drowned in a mysterious diving accident; and the destructive spiral of a Marshallese teenager whose American girlfriend rejects him when she returns to the States—Missile Paradise is an epic, heartbreaking, and satirical novel about the clash of cultures between the Americans trying to realize...

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awards
      • source: Notable Books Council
      • value: Notable Books for Adults
publisher
IG Publishing
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      • description: Fiction / Political
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      • description: Fiction / Alternative History