The Brothers K

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Duncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad. Highly inventive formally, the novel is mainly narrated by Kincaid Chance, the youngest son in a family of four boys and identical twin girls, the children of Hugh Chance, a discouraged minor-league ballplayer whose once-promising career was curtained by an industrial accident, and his wife Laura, an increasingly fanatical Seventh-Day Adventist. The plot traces the working-out of the family's fate from the beginning of the Eisenhower years through the traumas of Vietnam.

645 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1992

Literary awards

About the author

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David James Duncan (born 1952) is an American novelist and essayist, best known for his two bestselling novels, The River Why (1983) and The Brothers K (1992). Both involve fly fishing, baseball, and family.

Both received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers award; The Brothers K was a New York Times Notable Book in 1992 and won a Best Books Award from the American Library Association.

Film adaptation
In 2008, The River Why was adapted into a "low-budget film" of the same name starring William Hurt and Amber Heard. Since April 30, 2008, the film rights to The River Why have become the subject of a lawsuit by Duncan alleging copyright infringement, among other issues.


Other works
Duncan has written a collection of short stories, River Teeth (1996), and a memoir of sorts, My Story As Told By Water (2001). His latest work is God Laughs and Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right, published in 2006.

An essay, "Bird Watching as a Blood Sport", appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1998; Duncan wrote the foreword to Thoreau on Water: Reflecting Heaven (2001).

An essay, "A Mickey Mantle koan: The obstinate grip of an autographed baseball" appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1992.

Personal life
Duncan was born in Portland, Oregon and lives in Missoula County, Montana.

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