''Elegy for Sam Emerson'' is a novel by the American writer

Hilary Masters Hilary Masters (February 3, 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri – June 14, 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was an American novelist, the son of poet Edgar Lee Masters, and Ellen Frances Coyne Masters. He attended Davidson College from 1944–1946, t ...

set in pre-

9/11 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. The novel tells the story of Sam Emerson, proprietor of an upscale

Mount Washington Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at and the most topographically prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. The mountain is notorious for its erratic weather. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, ...

restaurant with stunning views of the three rivers below. Emerson, at midlife and nostalgic, ruminates on his strange childhood as he faces the prospect of life without his much younger lover, and at the same time, deals with disposing of his mother's ashes and traveling to France to look for his father's unmarked grave.

Sources

''Contemporary Authors Online''. The Gale Group, 2004. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000065011.

External links

Review of ''Elegy for Sam Emerson'' in ''The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Elegy For Sam Emerson 2006 American novels Novels set in Pittsburgh Books published by university presses