A cross-continental novel that splices the vast expanse of Texas with a daughter's desire to reconnect with her aging father.
When Mathilde's stepfather dies in Denmark, she is plagued by worries about the potential death of her American father on the other side of the Atlantic. In a desire to catalog her love for, and memories with, her father, Mathilde travels to America and writes a novel about their relationship that she has always known she should write.Lone Star is about distance: the distance between a father and a daughter; the distance between Mathilde's Danish heritage and her half-American family; the separation of language; and the passage of time between Mathilde's adulthood and the summers she spent as a child in St. Louis. These irrevocable gaps swirl as Mathilde voyages to her father's food court in Texas to explore a relationship that still has time to grow. A book that doubles as travelogue and family novel, Lone Star occupies the often-mythologized landscape of Texas to share a story of being alive and claiming the right to feel at home, even across the ocean.
Awarded one of the Best Books of 2018 by the Danish State Art Foundation, who noted: "Mathilde Walter Clark has written an all-embracing, touching and powerful tale of a child's love and the bond of the family."
"The book is simply amazing." - Livetidukkethuset.dk
"beautifully done." - Svend Skriver, Christian Daily
"Lone Star makes the reader smarter. Wiser about themselves, about the relationship between daughters and fathers, and wiser about what it means to lose both the living and the dead." - IN
"I enjoyed reading it, being swirled into Mathilde Walter Clark's tale, being delighted with her beautiful language and her fine, touching descriptions of emotions, landscapes, people. It is a powerful tale of exploring one's origin in order to feel part of a larger whole. - Litteraturhjørnet.dk
"You need to read this book." - Karen Syberg, Information