Best-seller out of the blue

Dale Myers

16 July 2008

Though Wroblewski lives in Colorado and the book - which took more than ten years to finish - is set in the Midwest, many New Britain writers played key roles in its success. They are dazzled, too, even as they admired Wroblewski's gift. "The 1st time I met David, he knew where he had been going" she announced. "It's a sworn statement to his vision and stubbornness that he seemed to make an extraordinarily long journey from that early vision.".

It was either number 1 or two last week on all the regional independent bookseller lists. Wroblewski's 562-page novel tells of a mute boy in agricultural Wisconsin devastated by the passing of his pop. It's about sour grief and rage, with a desperate flight into a wilderness, and a fateful return. As with any work of art, precisely why folk reply to "Edgar Sawtelle" is a puzzle. It would be its Homeric odyssey, the Shakespearean drama of a pa's murder and a son's search for vengeance. It'd be the evocation of an agricultural farm community. One thing is clear : nobody is purchasing

this book because it's like something else they've read not long ago. As with youthful Edgar Sawtelle, his folks owned a dog house and trained dogs.

He attended a two-year campus of the school of Wisconsin, then moved to the four-year campus at La Crosse, where he became fascinated with PC software and modified his major from theater to PC science. Though he enjoyed software, he longed to scribble fiction. His PC background had trained him to approach writing as a craft, to be studied and mastered. "I was committed to its being a learning novel" he claimed.

"I know lots of 1st books finish up in drawers. "When I attempted to scribble it, I quickly saw that I did not understand what it takes to carry a particularly long story together." In 1996 he had been accepted into the graduate writing program at Warren Wilson university in North Carolina. Jackson

held an auction, and the winner was Ecco Press. Wroblewski is happy yet is trying not to get caught up in the excitement. "I would love for plenty of folks to read this story. But I also wish I could step aside and be an observer. The query in my mind is, 'What am I able to learn? ' ". Russo has a concept of what publishing can learn. "Say what you need about the dumbing-down of America" he revealed. There is so much pessimism in the sector now.