The Flamingo Rising Book

September 1997

"My name is Abraham Isaac Lee, and I am my father's son. This is a story about Land and Love and a Great Fire that consumed my father's dreams."

So begins the tale of Abraham Isaac Lee, the adopted Korean son of Hubert Lee and Edna Scott, who looks back at his childhood in the 1950s and '60s in Jacksonville, Florida. Hubert Lee, a deeply eccentric southerner, settles there after the Korean War and moves his family into The Flamingo -- a drive-in movie theater that boasts the world's largest outdoor screen. The Flamingo, an instant success, stirs a bitter yet hilarious feud between Hubert Lee and mortician Turner West. West, who owns the neighboring funeral home, cannot bear the proximity of the 150-foot-high screen (he actually shoots at its huge neon cowboy marquee daily). Pride -- and love for Edna Scott -- pits these two men against each other in an unwinnable battle for land and power. To make matters worse, Abraham falls deeply in love with Grace, Turner West's only daughter.

Publishers Weekly

A crazed dachshund-terrier is kept alone in a tower. A funeral-home owner shoots daily at the neon cowboy marquee of the neighboring drive-in theater. A skywriter crash-lands promoting the film Psycho. With people and circumstances just that side of ordinary, this pitch-perfect first novel is reminiscent of the best of John Irving.

In 1953, the Flamingo is featured in Life as the world's largest drive-in theater: a 150-foot-high Florida oceanside tower serves as the theater screen. Fifteen years later, the tower-screen is home to Hubert Lee, Edna Scott and their two adopted Korean childrenand a chronic sun-blocking nuisance to mortician Turner West. The feud between Lee and West is hilarious and tragic, as the ostensible land battle (really a struggle for Edna's heart) obstructs the burgeoning love between Lee's son, Abraham Isaac, and West's daughter, Grace. An Asian among rednecks, narrator Abe/Izzy recounts with much warmth and little animus his coming-of-age in a world gone slightly madcap.

Like the giant July 4th fireworks display toward which the story builds, this engaging, moving novel sends up one sparkler after another on its way to a crash-bang, heart-stopping ending.