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Mule Boy
- Author
- Andrew Krivak
- Narrator
- Charles Linshaw
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 10 March 2026
- Run Time
- 4 hours 44 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
An elegiac novel of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the story
On New Year’s Day, 1929, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface. After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed.
From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. But, years later, when the miners’ loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black.
Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live.
Critics Review
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“Krivak brilliantly succeeds at plumbing the depths of the human spirit and showing how the dead live on in memory. This is flawless.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“A harrowing and immersive novel, Mule Boy fathoms the depths of personal anguish and emergence.”
Foreword Reviews
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“Descending into the coal mines of Pennsylvania in the early part of the twentieth century, Andrew Krivak has come up with a diamond. Mule Boy is both mesmerizing and emotionally shattering. Its beautiful, hypnotic, lyrical prose, often reminiscent of the scriptures, casts a spell so profound that you will not want to break out of it.”
Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others
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“Andrew Krivak is one of contemporary fiction’s finest architects of the line, and I am utterly swept away by his lyric, daring, and kinetic music. Mule Boy is a riveting exploration of the ghosts we carry coiled within us—and what is unleashed when they leap out into the present. This book is as brilliant and sure as a bolt of lightning.”
Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
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“Sometimes you hold a writer so close you want them all to yourself. Andrew Krivak has been that writer for me and his Mule Boy blazes so brightly it has already become, in my life, a great constellation. This novel is bewitching sorcery, a total wonder, a raging fever dream that sings and bellows and captures the entirety of our lives—all the things we fear and love and let go of and win back and cherish the most. It should, and will, stand alongside the works of Roberto Bolaño, Marilynne Robinson, and Denis Johnson. Here is a tale for our times, for all time.”
Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Andrew Krivak
- Narrator
- Charles Linshaw
- Duration
- 4 hours 44 minutes
- Release Date
- 10 March 2026
- ISBN
- 9798228820463
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Adventure fiction
Synopsis
An elegiac novel of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the storyOn New Year’s Day, 1929, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface. After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed.From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. But, years later, when the miners’ loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black.Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live.
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