A searing novel about memory, abandonment, and betrayal from the
acclaimed and bestselling Russell Banks
"During a career stretching almost half a century, Russell Banks has
published an extraordinary collection of brave, morally imperative
novels. . . . In this complex and powerful novel, we come face to face
with the excruciating allure of redemption."
At the center of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist
documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders
and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now
in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to
a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at
last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by
his acolyte and ex-star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of
Fife's wife and alongside Malcolm's producer, cinematographer, and sound
technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb
the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.
Imaginatively structured around Fife's secret memories and alternating
between the experiences of the characters who are filming his
confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about
a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory
itself. Russell Banks gives us a daring and resonant work about the
scope of one man's mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of
his recovered past.
