Robert Crooke

Robert Crooke


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Robert Crooke is a journalist, media executive, and teacher. His poetry has been published in the West Hills Review, the literary journal of the Walt Whitman Birthplace in Long Island, NY. He has lectured at Suffolk County Community College, the University of Nebraska, New York University, and the University of Connecticut. He began his career as a sports reporter and columnist for the Long Island Press and for 13 years served as North American press spokesman for Reuters, the international news group.

Currently, he heads financial media relations for the US division of Makinson Cowell, a capital markets advisory firm, founded in 1989, which provides independent research and advice to a wide range of companies based primarily in Europe and North America. Sunrise, his second novel, was published in December 2007. His first novel, American Family (2004) was critically praised, and became a regional best-seller, popular with east-coast book discussion clubs. He and his wife reside in Bridgewater, CT.

Sunrise

Robert Crooke
iUniverse, Inc. (2007)
ISBN 9780595464777
Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (1/08)

Read the review on ReaderViews.com

Synopsis: "Sunrise" is a tale of illusion, loss and renewal in a tragic age. Set in Manhattan, and in the fashionable beach towns of Long Island's East End, it follows the interwoven lives of three friends from the late 1960s to the present-exploring the confluence of art, commerce, politics and celebrity.

With its perfectly rendered physical setting,"Sunrise" draws readers into the reality of place and the universality of myth in a daring, Modernist style.

Stephen Dahl, the narrator of"Sunrise," is a troubled child of the 60s, an expatriate American author living in Paris, an alcoholic who has stopped drinking but failed to recover his spiritual equilibrium. Watching the horrors of September 11th from his Paris apartment, he is struck by renewed patriotism which vanishes quickly as America plans to invade Iraq. But he is called home in the Spring of 2003 by the death of his former best friend and by the chance to see his former lover, the widow of his old friend. Thus begins Stephen's journey to a past that reveals complex layers of moral and spiritual responsibility to his country, his countrymen and himself. Stephen confronts an uncertain future by accepting the moral limits of despair and the power of compassion.