Lost Son

In 1902, twenty-six-year-old Rainer Maria Rilke arrives in Paris to write a study
of the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin, having left his wife and newborn daughter
at home in the rural north of Germany. The bustling metropolis overwhelms the
young poet, and the squalor of the Latin Quarter where he resides touches off a
deep personal crisis. Not since Rilkes disastrous childhood has his world seemed
so menacing and strange. Sorely disquieted by poverty, loneliness, quailing
health, and fleets of dark memories, Rilke finds himself caught up in a powerful
reckoning with his unfinished childhood and the tangled relationships that
came from ithis wife and daughter clearly included.
Spanning Western Europe from 1875 to 1917, Lost Son brings a brooding
atmosphere and human complexity to an intimate, imaginative portrait of one
of the most sensitive artists of his time. Rilkes odd childhood and difficult early
life may have created the uncompromising determination that infuses his art. But
was the moral cost too great?
In this gorgeous new novel, M. Allen Cunningham brings alive the intellectual
and artistic movements that shaped the 20th century and the personalities that
made this history their ownfrom Rilke himself to the great master Rodin to
the fascinating Lou Salome, mistress or confidant to Rilke, Freud and Nietzsche.
The result is an exploration of the forever imperfect loyalties we face in life and
the seemingly immeasurable distances that can separate life and art.