Fup, Jim Dodge, 1983

Recommended by Colum McCann (Transatlantic and Let the Great World Spin) in the By the Book feature in the 6/19/14 NYT Book Review, this is a modern fable about two characters and a duck. Granddaddy, born Jake Santee in 1878 and a gambling, drinking, marrying man with 950 acres won in a card game in Northern California’s Sierras becomes the guardian of his only daughter’s son, Tiny, when the daughter drowns when the boy is 3. Granddaddy, Tiny (6’5”, 270 pounds) live on the ranch in a wonderful symbiotic relationship and one day, Tiny discovers a baby duckling in a posthole ravaged by Lockjaw, the wild pig. They resuscitate the duck with Granddaddy’s special whiskey and name him Fup Duck. The four characters meet in a climactic scene where Lockjaw dies, Fup is killed and rises again from the pig’s entrails, and Granddad dies the day after his 100^th birthday. Laugh out loud funny in places and moving, this is a grand tale.