A Powerful Debut - Ten Thousand Saints

By the third line of this ambitious, bold, multi generational debut novel we know that the frigid last morning in 1987 is the last day of 15-year-old Teddy McNicholas’s life. But what a day it will be - a precursor of the magnum effect his death will have on those who knew him. Teddy and his best friend, Jude Keffy-Horn, live in Lintonburg, Vermont, where their time is spent getting high on whatever means possible and dreaming of going to New York City.


They’re the offspring of troubled parents: Teddy’s mother, Queen Bea, is a hopeless drunk who has a penchant for disappearing, which she has just done. Jude’s mother, Harriet, ekes out a living by making bongs and pipes. Les, his father, abandoned the family home for NYC when Jude was nine. Add to this group of misfits Eliza, the teenage daughter of Les’s Manhattan girlfriend. Curious about Les’s children she comes to Lintonburg where she introduces Teddy to sex and cocaine, the latter when mixed with the other drugs of the day cause him to die of an overdose.

The action switches to New York City when Jude goes to live with his father and eventually befriends Teddy’s older brother, Johnny, a tattoo artist who plays in a punk rock band. Along with Eliza who is pregnant (with Teddy’s child?) The three form a family of sorts with Jude doing his best to find his way in the world and “do the right thing.” We’re reminded that there are many pitfalls on the road from adolescence to adulthood.

Henderson brings all of Jude’s era to us - the drug scene, Hare Krishnas, punk rock bands, the underside of NYC in the 1980s. TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is a compelling, thoughtfully delivered coming-of-age tale which carefully limns a generation’s thoughts, fears, and hopes. This is a powerful debut that promises more from an extremely gifted author.