Starred review from December 15, 2024
Two brothers struggle with moral, legal, and physical challenges while living off the grid near Yellowstone. The seasons and mountain wilderness are practically characters in this vividly rendered novel, while the human element is merely part of the landscape. Thad and his younger brother, Hazen, have been doing whatever they need to survive, living off the land. Their mother long ago abandoned the family, and now their father has died. They're on their own, extending that family's legacy: "Though they possessed no great strength, the men in their line had been shaped--by environment and circumstance--for tremendous acts of myopic endurance." The brothers are even more myopic and perhaps not as strong, or at least not as fit for survival, as their capable, taciturn father had been. Their father also had a strong sense of right and wrong, and the brothers know they are falling short of that. At least Thad does. At 27, he's a year older than Hazen, and he's the more reflective one. Hazen is the impulsive one, less capable of functioning on his own, or so thinks Thad. Their lives have become more of a challenge than ever, as their father's death left them in greater financial straits, and the roof of their rickety house is almost literally coming down on them. An evil, mysterious outsider--"the Scot"--offers a scheme to save the house, but it involves an illegal haul of elk antlers; hundreds of pounds worth. It appears the brothers are destined for disaster, but one of the surprises here is the way the novel's elemental plot subverts expectations. "You don't know anything," the Scot tells Thad. "You don't even know how much you don't know." A novel of impeccable control and unflinching darkness. And then a glimmer of hope.
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November 11, 2024
Wink (August), who works as a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River, mines his extensive knowledge of the great outdoors in this transportive novel of two brothers living on the margins in the Beartooth mountains of Montana. Thad, 27, and Hazen, 26, are deep in debt from their late father’s hospital bills, and eke out an existence by logging, fishing, and bear poaching. Thad shoulders the burden of their survival, frequently overriding Hazen, who is simpleminded but extremely competent and instinctive in the wild. When a neighbor known as “the Scot,” who recently killed someone for breaking into his house, proposes an illegal scheme to remove shed antlers from the national park, Thad refuses, but the Scot manipulates Hazen, who has a soft spot for the Scot’s daughter, into defying his brother. Complicating matters is the arrival of their hippie mother, Sacajawea, who abandoned the family years earlier. While the narrative tension is inconsistent, Wink mesmerizes with his descriptions of nature and the men’s survival skills, and he successfully portrays the brothers’ humanity in their dance between struggling for dominance and wanting to support each other. Admirers of Thomas McGuane ought to seek this out. Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, Gernert Co.
January 1, 2025
Thad, 27, is the practical brother; Hazen, a year younger, operates more on instinct. The two live together off-the-grid, in the mountains near Yellowstone. It's not an easy life, and making a living means occasionally going against the law. But they have their limits (or, at least, Thad does). When a shady stranger wants them to go into Yellowstone and collect elk antlers--they shed their antlers every year, and people will pay a lot of money for them--Thad vetoes the idea, even though Hazen is keen to do it. But sometimes we can't control the things we do, or the things that happen to us, as the brothers soon discover. Wink, who is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River when he's not writing beautifully told short stories and novels, is a master craftsman: his dialogue is pitch perfect, his characters breathtakingly real, and the setting so vividly described we can feel the mud seeping into our socks and hear the water from the hole in the ceiling plinking into the metal bowl on the floor. A remarkable, memorable novel.
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