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A book is born
With more first-time novelists published every year, meet seven who deserve to stand out
By Amy Scribner If you choose just one novel to read in these waning days of summer, it should be the lovely and terrifically paced The Lace Reader. Part historical novel, part romance, part mystery—with a stunning twist that will have you hurriedly flipping back through the pages wondering how you missed the clues—this is a perfectly satisfying read. How can you not read a novel with this opening line? "My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time." And it only gets better from there. Towner has returned to her hometown of Salem after her beloved Aunt Eva drowns in the harbor while out on her daily swim. It's a suspicious death: a volatile local evangelist had lately been accusing Eva, who ran a local tea room and could tell people's fortunes by reading images in lace, of witchcraft. Towner's homecoming is a reluctant one. She's spent years in Los Angeles to avoid Salem, where her twin sister committed suicide and her eccentric mother remains on an isolated island, operating a modern-day Underground Railroad for abused wives. Coming home brings Towner face to face with painful secrets that still haunt the Whitney family. After working in theater in Chicago and writing screenplays in Los Angeles, Brunonia Barry returned to her home state of Massachusetts, where she wrote word puzzles and contributed to the Beacon Street Girls series of novels for tweens. The Lace Reader is her first solo novel. Raised near Salem, growing up near a town so steeped in history taught her a lesson: "I think it's important to understand our history, if only to keep from repeating it." Barry has created a wholly original story in The Lace Reader, a surreal and feverish book with the smell of Massachusetts sea air practically wafting off every page. Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.
By Brunonia Barry Morrow, $24.95 400 pages, ISBN 9780061624766 Also available on audio
By Deborah Donovan This spellbinding debut novel set in the north woods of Wisconsin resonates with the reader on many levels. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a mystery, a coming-of-age tale and a deeply emotional exploration of the often inexplicable ties between dogs and their owners. Starting with Edgar's grandfather in the 1920s, the Sawtelles have been dedicated to the breeding and training of dogs—a mission they have painstakingly carried out not by tracing pedigrees, but by a unique, intuitive method of tracking behavioral and personality traits. Edgar, Gar and Trudy Sawtelle's only child, is born mute, but he is perceptive beyond his years, and his ability to communicate with the kennel dogs using his own brand of sign language is uncanny. Born at nearly the same time as Edgar is the dog Almondine, and they forge a heart-rending bond. Author David Wroblewski, who grew up not far from where the book is set, paints his characters with a keenly empathetic brush. His passages that revolve around human-dog relationships are especially memorable. Scene after scene etches itself in our minds, such as when Edgar races back to the house from his father's gravesite near the ceremony's end to retrieve Almondine, who had inadvertently been left behind. She sits her "wise haunches down," and together they watch the casket descend. Wroblewski's seemingly bucolic plot takes a menacing turn when Edgar discerns foul play behind his father's sudden death. In addition, he is inwardly enraged by the attention his mother is showering on his uncle Claude—Gar's brother, with whom he had always been at odds. Edgar's dreams of his father become painfully realistic; he feels his presence as if all his father's own memories were being given, somehow, to him. An accident for which Edgar feels partially to blame propels him, along with three of his dogs, into the surrounding Chequamegon forest, only sparsely dotted with tiny towns and isolated cabins. The struggle of this steadfast quartet to survive, and learn to trust not only each other, but strangers, constitutes a harrowing coming-of-age saga, culminating in Edgar's return home, and the violent, somehow preordained conclusion that awaits him. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is an unforgettable debut—one to savor, to share, and even, despite its length, to re-read. Deborah Donovan, a dog person, has spent part of each summer since childhood in the Chequamegon National Forest.
By David Wroblewski Ecco, $25.95, 576 pages ISBN 9780061374227 Also available on audio
By Jessica Inman Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites—the central characters in Rachel Kushner's debut novel, Telex from Cuba—are busy coming of age in 1950s Cuba. K.C. is the privileged son of the president of United Fruit, while Everly and her family dwell on the (relatively) less wealthy side of the American enclave. They serve as our eyes and ears in a unique Cuba, sharply discerning the disparities and novelties in their idyllic, yet complex life. But K.C.'s brother has disappeared with rebels associated with Fidel Castro, and someone has set fire to his father's sugar cane, signaling that their world is about to change forever. This wildly intriguing story is a genius mix of history and fiction. Christian de la Mazière, a real-life French former Nazi and member of the Waffen SS, here takes a fictional turn as an agent of the revolution. Such is also the case with Rachel K, a prostitute murdered in Cuba in the 1930s and elegized in song and a 1973 movie. In Telex from Cuba, she serves as an underground revolucionaria playing multiple sides of the drama. Ernest Hemingway even makes an appearance on a Cuban dance floor. These allusions shine like understated gems in the fabric of the novel. Some elements are entirely real, of course. The province of Oriente is real, as are—obviously—the Castro brothers and United Fruit. The fictional characters carry on within this historical framework, leaving the reader sure she has gained great insight into the American experience of Cuba just before and just after the revolution. And this is rightly so: Kushner's mother grew up in the same region as Everly and K.C., and Kushner has drawn from this family legacy to create a work of realistic fiction. The close of the novel finds K.C. reflecting on these events of his growing-up years, wistful for the ornate, exotic beauty of his former life and thirsty for answers about his brother's choices. We're left feeling sorry that even paradise is temporal and fraught with imperfection, but so thrilled by it all that we want to hear the story again.
By Rachel Kushner Scribner $25, 336 pages ISBN 9781416561033
By Andrea Brunais Romantic images of Lawrence of Arabia and sunbaked, hospitable Bedouins well up from Western books and movies about the desert. That evocative landscape plays a seminal role in Zoë Ferraris' first novel as well, but in her masterful hands Saudi Arabia's mysteries are free of overheated symbolism. In Finding Nouf, we look into the minds of trackers who can tell a story from footprints in the sand, their etchings unique as fingerprints. We share the frustrations of Miss Katya Hijazi, a highly trained crime-scene investigator, who must dodge the religious police and her father's worries whenever she leaves the house. But most of all we feel the pain and puzzlement, the idealism and yearnings of Nayir, a Palestinian who has grown up in Saudi Arabia and is put in charge of investigating a 16-year-old girl's death, and finding her killer. Young Nouf drowned in an onrush of water in a desert valley not long before her wedding. But did she run away, as her wealthy family chooses to believe? Or was she kidnapped and murdered? Nayir devotes himself to uncovering the facts even as the grieving family gives mixed signals about whether they want the truth. Ferraris crafts her main character so skillfully that the reader roots for Nayir despite his judgmental attitudes toward women who show too much skin, even an ankle or a forthright gaze. Miss Hijazi's forwardness grates on him, her behavior as unsettling as the hushed-up evidence of Nouf's bloody injuries. Nayir and Miss Hijazi become unlikely partners as they attempt to find justice for a girl who in death gained the ultimate release from an oppressive society. The story proceeds at a flawless pace, with landscape and characters deftly drawn. The reader enters places few Americans ever see, including the inner sanctum of a Saudi family, which Ferraris knows first-hand: she lived in Jeddah with her then-husband and his Saudi-Palestinian family following the Gulf War. Her remarkable debut is a tale of manners, romance and intrigue with a literary feel that will make readers hope she follows her first novel with a second. Andrea Brunais writes from Tampa, Florida, and Bluefield, West Virginia.
By Zoë Ferraris Houghton Mifflin $24, 320 pages ISBN 9780618873883
By Iris Blasi It was not suicide. Of that, 17-year-old Jesse Matson is certain. He is positive his father wouldn't have killed himself while on their hunting trip in the wintry woods of Minnesota. He remains convinced even when the town sheriff rules that the gunshot wound Harold Matson suffered was self-inflicted. A visit from his late father—a gruesome figure who emerges from the lake a few days after his death with a face "like a burned-out building, blackened at the windows and caved in on itself"—and the ghost's declaration that "I didn't want to leave, Jesse," is, in many ways, the final nail in the coffin: Jesse vows to find his father's killer and exact revenge. "Who do you think you are, anyway? Hamlet?" Jesse's friend asks him after hearing of the visit from beyond the grave. "Next thing, Jesse, you'll be telling me your old man was murdered and your uncle's the one that did it." Exactly. The novel's title, Undiscovered Country (taken from one of the Danish prince's soliloquies), isn't the only thing Lin Enger, brother of well-known novelist Leif Enger, borrows from Hamlet in his graceful rumination on the ties that bind. The likely culprit? Jesse's uncle, Clay, who had courted Jesse's mom back in high school before his older brother swooped in and made her his bride. Jesse's love interest? An Ophelia-esque girl from the wrong side of the tracks. The story is told a decade after the shooting by an adult Jesse wanting to explain his version of what happened to his little brother Magnus. Jesse, now a college English teacher, narrates carefully, with the stark, parsed cadences that come from trying to tell a story so painful it rails against words. "I inserted my finger into the nine hold, spun the dial clockwise and watched it spin back around. Then I dialed one, twice, quickly," Jesse says of his 911 call after discovering his father dead. The telling is deliberate, so that the listener will make no mistake in the hearing. Though the ending—despite a last-minute twist—is hardly a surprise, Enger's glistening prose, set so gently on the frozen lakes of Minnesota, will have readers shivering in their boots. Iris Blasi is a writer and editor in New York City.
By Lin Enger Little, Brown $23.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780316006941
By Harvey Freedenberg Somewhere near the top of the short list of dreaded medical diagnoses is Alzheimer's disease. And how much more tragic is it when that disease strikes someone long before old age has descended? That dark prospect is the subject of 24-year-old Stefan Merrill Block's compassionate, heartbreaking, funny and consistently engaging first novel, The Story of Forgetting. Seth Waller is a precocious, some would say "geeky," 15-year-old living outside Austin, Texas. When his mother Jamie's merely annoying forgetfulness morphs into a strain of early onset Alzheimer's known as EOA-23, Seth embarks on a stealthy "empirical investigation" seeking the roots of her disorder. Along the way, he meets victims of the disease and their family members, their encounters played out in scenes both vivid and poignant. Paralleling Seth's story is that of Abel Haggard, an elderly hunchback spending his dwindling days in a ramshackle house near Dallas, on what's left of what was once a thriving farm. Abel bears the searing memory of having fathered a child with his sister-in-law while his twin brother Paul served in the Army. Like Seth, his life has been scarred by the loss of family members to Alzheimer's. The novel's narrative unfolds deliberately, revealing how the lives of Abel and Seth are inextricably linked. That some may discover the source of their connection relatively early in the book does nothing to detract from its emotionally resonant final scenes. Interspersed with the main narrative are fascinating chapters entitled "Genetic History," describing the role of the Mapplethorpe family of England and its descendants in spreading the EOA-23 gene across the globe. Alongside this science are enchanting mythological tales of a land called Isidora, "where every need is met and every sadness is forgotten." In an author's note, Block reveals the prodigious research that informs and enriches this story. Yet he never permits that research to eclipse the storytelling skills on display in this accomplished first novel. His own family history spurred an interest in Alzheimer's, since many of his mother's relatives, including his maternal grandmother, suffered from the disease. The only question about what's sure to be his eagerly awaited next work will be whether he can discover another subject about which he cares so passionately and speaks so eloquently. Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
By Stefan Merrill Block Random House $25, 320 pages ISBN 9781400066797 Also available on audio
By Deborah Donovan The Promise of the Wolves is the first in a trilogy with an unusual premise: chronicling the life of an ancient wolf pack. Author Dorothy Hearst relates her spellbinding saga through the voice of Kaala, a mixed-blood pup born into the Swift River Pack of the Wide Valley, somewhere in southern Europe approximately 14,000 years ago. Legend says that a wolf whose blood is mixed with that of wolves outside the Valley will "stand forever between two worlds." When Kaala's mother is banished from the pack for mating with an outsider, Kaala, who may be the wolf named in the prophecy, is allowed to stay, though ridiculed by Ruuqo, the pack leader, and tormented by his pups. Ruuqo repeatedly lectures the Swift River pups about the covenant the Wide Valley wolves made with the Ancients (the Sky, Sun, Moon and Earth) many millennia ago: to avoid humans, never to kill a human unprovoked and to mate only with wolves inside the Valley. Kaala hears his warnings, but her intuition and instinct mysteriously draw her to the humans nearby. As the moons come and go in Kaala and the other pups' first year, she gradually becomes their designated leader—admired for her willingness to stand up to Ruuqo's harsh treatment and her tenacious loyalty to the weaker pups. Eventually her attraction to humans is tested when, straying afar from the pack, she saves a girl from drowning. Kaala befriends the girl, TaLi, and "her boy" Brelan; they even hunt together, sharing their prey. The pups allied with Kaala follow her lead, choosing humans of their own with whom to bond. Kaala experiences potent and conflicting emotions—she is drawn to the newfound humans, but at the same time deeply mournful, knowing her old world may soon be ending. Hearst spent 10 years editing books from nonprofit organizations, while simultaneously "trying to be a writer." Her fascination with wolves began in 2001, and once she started writing about them, she says she couldn't stop. Extensive research with the International Wolf Center and lengthy observation of wolves in sanctuaries laid the groundwork for this debut novel, loosely based on the "controversial and contested" theory of the co-evolution of wolves and humans, which maintains that wolves taught the early humans to hunt cooperatively and form complex societies. This moving saga will appeal especially to animal lovers, but all readers will be intrigued by Hearst's unique blend of myth and scientific research, and be left eagerly awaiting the next installment.
By Dorothy Hearst Simon & Schuster $25, 352 pages ISBN 9781416569985 Also available on audio
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BRUNONIA BARRY
DAVID WROBLEWSKI
RACHEL KUSHNER
ZOE FERRARIS
LIN ENGER
STEFAN MERRILL BLOCK
DOROTHY HEARST