Reviews
Not since Norman Maclean's A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT and Ivan Doig's THIS HOUSE OF SKY have I read such a beautifully-written story about work, place, family, and tradition in America. Joseph M. Mascia writes straight from the heart in a voice that is at once fierce and funny and uniquely honest. I loved A WELL EXECUTED PIECE OF WORK, from the first well-executed sentence to the last. - Howard Frank Mosher, award-winning author of WALKING TO GATLINBURG and THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPRESS
A very fine piece of writing. Although there are a lot of seemingly unrelated vignettes, they all magically come together in the end. - READER'S REVIEW
Excerpt
I first had an inkling that things weren’t quite right with old Harold that first autumn here when I saw him using Junior’s backhoe to dig up a shad bush out in a corner of the property. Transplanting time. He was working the controls pretty well, in the manner of someone who’s comfortable on a piece of machinery but uses it only rarely: a little jerky with the hoe. He was doing okay, though. The trouble was he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. He obviously didn’t consider this a problem, by the way. He was clearly as happy as the proverbial clam at high tide. When I showed up, the old lady was there beside the machine, shouting, pleading. He just kept on digging. When he’d heard enough of her, he tried to fling a hoe full of dirt in her direction. She bustled off to the main house.
It was a fairly warm day. A little breezy. Too chilly to be on a backhoe naked. I tried something that works with nine out of ten people, nine out of ten times: told him he had a phone call. Pointed to the big house. He idled it down and I escorted him. I wanted to hear if he had anything particular in mind. He didn't really. Just a nice autumn day. Good day for a little transplanting, a little backhoe work. Naked. Who could argue?
About the Book
The unnamed narrator is writing from one of a complex of cottages on a resort island off the northeast U.S., during the late winter and into the early spring of 2000.
The narrative, which at first seems to be some kind of a confession of a crime, weaves in a number of related and interrelated threads: the relationship of the narrator with the family that owns and manages the cottages – the dotty parents, the very strange adult son, and the daughter who ties the narrator inextricably (and tragically) to this family and this place; the nature of the working relationship of the narrator with the worker who comes to be his right-hand man in his masonry construction business (his quasi-legal tender); and the ways these various relationships evolve to yield the narrative’s climax. The narrator also manages to squeeze in brief descriptions of a couple of thoroughly Kafkaseque dreams, a few of the highlights and lowlights of his construction career, and some reflections on the germination and execution of all creative efforts.
WHERE TO BUY
Gavilan Books at Amazon