The King of America traces the short, brilliant life of Stephen Hesse, firstborn son of one of America’s wealthiest, most powerful men—yet Stephen’s distinguished paternal lineage and the great privilege it has conferred on him are at odds with the working-class background of his mother. Ultimately, a scandalous divorce and the replacement of the somber, dark-eyed mother and child with a new family more becoming to Stephen’s father’s political ambition leave the young man an outsider. The sole focus of his abandoned mother, Stephen Hesse grows up lonesome and restless. At Harvard, recovering from a failed love affair, Stephen falls under the sway of a charismatic anthropology professor and, at last, feels a sense of direction and identity. As a scholar, writer, and art collector for his father’s museum, Stephen accompanies his mentor to the impossibly strange and distant world of Netherlands New Guinea, where a Neolithic culture, still practicing its ancient rites of head-hunting, thrives in its last moments before modernity arrives. There Stephen discovers the Asmat bisj poles—terrifying, glorious, towering pieces of carved woodwork honoring tribal ancestors—which he hopes will secure his professional standing and guarantee him a lasting place in his father’s esteem. But his hardheaded insistence on securing the art before the onset of the monsoon season has tragic consequences. Loosely based on the mysterious 1961 disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, The King of America moves seamlessly from the bastions of East Coast privilege to the tropical lushness of New Guinea. Samantha Gillison writes with the powers of observation of a naturalist and the assurance of a born novelist. Part love story, part adventure yarn, part family tragedy, The King of America is an exceptional feat of storytelling. In 1961, Stephen Hesse, the son of an American oil titan, finds himself adrift off the coast of Irian Jaya, in the path of a monsoon. Inspired by the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in Dutch New Guinea, Gillison's novel excavates the interior life of a lonely, willful "prince of America" whose every relationship and attempt at achievement is tainted by his father's wealth and power. The mystery here is not Stephen's ultimate fate (Rockefeller's body was never found) but what draws him from his sheltered world to an untouched Stone Age land where women suckle piglets and men wear necklaces of human vertebrae. As Stephen ranges through the jungle, his fixation on collecting tribal carvings becomes a doomed hunt for himself and "a pure expression of what it was to be a man: sexual, angry, full of remorse, sorry to be a creature that will die." Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Gillison is a quietly commanding writer who has some extremely provocative and important things to say about wealth, indigenous cultures, and the domination of Western civilization. These concerns fueled her impressive debut, The Undiscovered Country (1998), and underlie this psychologically and culturally astute fictionalization of the sad fate of Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared in 1961 off the coast of Papua New Guinea, where he was collecting native art. Gillison's evocation of place is sensual and penetrating, and her imagining of the heart and mind of her hero, Stephen Hesse, is masterful. The eldest son of a man so rich and powerful he is America's virtual king, and the only child of the big man's rejected first wife, Stephen is materially rich, emotionally impoverished, and at perpetual loose ends. Athletic, artistic, and solitary, he seeks love with an older woman who feels nothing for him and spiritual revelation in a dangerous and distant land. Even in the wilds of New Guinea his pseudoroyalty condemns him to the bleak loneliness reserved for those who are resented by all. Gillison's supremely riveting story explores the jungle of the psyche, cultural collisions, and the "dark curse" of an unholy inheritance. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Tropical heat ripples off these pages: Samantha Gillison depicts New Guinea and its indigenous people in lush, rare, passionate language. She sympathetically animates American characters no less exotic, including a troubled young anthropologist and his oil-rich family. The King of America takes us on a stirring journey to a distant land–and whose exploration leads us to the heart of human folly.” – Ken Kalfus , author of The Commissariat of Enlightenment “In this extraordinarly beautiful and atmospheric novel, Samantha Gillison once again displays her tremendous gifts for characterising both people and places. The King of America is an utterly absorbing portrait of both.” – Margot Livesey "From its compelling opening to its unexpected, radiantly beautiful final scenes, this is an extraordinary novel." – Andrea Barrett , author of Ship Fever , winner of the National Book Award “This wonderful novel is set in two vastly di