The Way to Eden

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A place to slip out of the world? -- Yes, it exists. Just read Gerhard Koepf's newest novel and you will have a good chance of getting to Eden. Eden lies in Vermont, U.S.A., far away from the German cabinet of horrors. In Eden you can go hunting and fishing. There Indian Summer is burning maples under a boundless blue sky; the cemetery is called Nomad's Rest, and the dead are granted 'eternal reading.'It all started with Grandmother, who fell in love with the American officer John Fulton Rea from Eden, VT, who left her in the lurch and returned to his homeland. Grandmother's wish to settle down in Eden at last was not granted. So it remains for her grandson, the narrator, to take his grandmother to Eden posthumously. With the urn containing her ashes in his luggage, he travels to all the places she once wanted to stop over at on her way, all the way to Eden, where he strews her ashes over the dead colonel's grave.With his grandmother's savings he buys the colonel's house; his neighbor is the latter's uncle, and his faithful roommate is malaria, which he... * MITTELBAYERISCHE ZEITUNG *