The final book by the noted novelist, short story writer, and teacher John L'Heureux: the story of an affable stranger whose appeals for money gradually upend the lives of an academic's family
After a decades-long career as a critically acclaimed writer (including several novels with Viking and Penguin in the late '80s and early '90s) John L'Heureux had a late flowering in his career. In the year before his death in April of 2019,
The New Yorker
published three of his stories, and a collection of his short stories will be published by A Public Space in December 2019. His final novel,
The Beggar's Pawn
, is the story of a family whose chance meeting with a stranger while dog walking slowly becomes an ominous invasion of their domestic lives. David and Maggie Holliss are an ordinary married couple about to ease into a comfortable, well-earned retirement while tending to three middle-aged children with whom they share an edgy relationship of love and resentment. Reginald Parker enters their lives when he saves their dog from being run over by a truck, and when asked how they can possibly thank him, he replies with a request for the loan of two hundred dollars. They lend it to him, gladly, and thus begins what will become for them and their family a nightmare that moves from comic resignation to stark tragedy. In
, John L'Heureux explores the strains of marriage, the nature of trust, the limits of love, and the inevitability of fate.