©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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"Sometimes I think the people in this town are never more than a dozen words away from killing each other," says one of the residents of Abenaki Junction, Maine. And he's right. Abenaki, the setting for Archangel, Watkins's sixth book, is a tough little logging town. It produces men like mill-owner Jonah MacKenzie.
In the opening scene (which strains credulity), MacKenzie, pinned under a fallen tree, chainsaws his own leg off to save his life. He applies a tourniquet, then drags himself out of a freezing forest, finishes his coffee, and waves down a passing truck. When the driver faints at the sight of the bone sticking from the stump of the bleeding leg, MacKenzie simply heaves him to one side and drives them both into town. Now, there's a man to watch out for.
Years later, the same MacKenzie, swollen with wealth and power, is proceeding to clear-cut the 50,000 acres of the nearby Algonquin Wilderness. He has only nine months to do this before the area is declared a permanent wilderness preserve. "By the time I've finished with the Algonquin," he tells himself, "there won't be any wilderness left to preserve."
The townspeople are bothered by this, but only the crusading editor of the local paper, Madeleine Cody, appears willing to take a stand against MacKenzie. Enter Adam Gabriel, former Abenaki resident. Just back from the Gulf War, Gabriel now turns his talents to environmental terrorism. He ignites the smoldering resentment of the townspeople by carrying out a one-man guerrilla war to save the trees.
Author Watkins writes sparely, and his plot moves with the speed and power of the freight train which screams through Abenaki Junction. But the plot definitely outweighs the characters here, some of whom seem to be mouthpieces for speeches against or for saving the wilderness. One of the most credible is Dodge, the only policeman in town, who must carry out law enforcement duties which often run counter to his own beliefs. His hesitant romance with editor Madeleine is rendered with tenderness. Archangel is an adventure novel on a large scale, a masculine book which seems to have been written in a kind of literary testosterone instead of ink. This flows through the book as surely as the blood of the characters who have the misfortune of running into No Ears, the man-eating bear which stalks the Algonquin Wilderness.
At the center of Archangel is the thought that the destruction of wilderness areas is a bear of our own making. It's one which may come for us when there's no longer any place to hide, for the trees will all be gone.
James William Brown is the author of a novel, Blood Dance (Harcourt Brace). He lives in southeastern Massachusetts.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.