BURN by Peter Heller

Jess and Storey, both in their thirties and best friends since childhood, are hunting moose in Maine when they start encountering town after town that has been burned to a crisp.  Their own lives are obviously in danger as they gather snippets of information, from a Canadian radio station no less, about what is going on.  Soon their duo becomes a threesome, and Jess finds that his primary reason to survive is to protect Storey and Collie and get them all to a safe haven.  Fortunately, Jess and Storey are rational, resourceful, and compassionate, but when both factions in a civil war are unwilling to negotiate with strangers, self-preservation becomes their number one objective.  Interleaved within this tale is Jess’s backstory, particularly his relationship with Storey’s family, including an incident that he has never had the courage to share with Storey.  Given that they may not make it home from this trip, Jess is not sure that he wants to carry this burden to his grave, but Storey, too, has secrets of his own.  Their life-and-death journey, however, is the main reason to turn the pages.  No one writes a better adventure thriller than Peter Heller, and this novel is no exception.

THE LAST RANGER by Peter Heller

Ren Hopper is a Yellowstone enforcement ranger with lots of heroic skills and lots of regrets.  He couldn’t prevent his wife’s suicide nor his mother’s alcoholism, and he may have ruined the life of a grieving young man.  The main villain here, though, and the object of Ren’s constant ire, is humanity in general, who largely have no respect for wild animals.  They are either hunting them for their pelts or putting themselves in danger for a photo op with a predator.  Ren does what he can to rescue these latter foolish ones, despite wishing he could just leave them to a grisly fate, but the poachers are a threat to animals of both the two-legged and four-legged variety.  Heller’s The Guide is a better thriller, but this book has more heart and soul, as Ren has to consider the motivations of hunters and vandals before he throws the book at them.  He also has to outsmart them by being one step ahead of them, and that’s sometimes a tall order.  The author may wax eloquent a little too often about the natural beauty of Montana, but these moments of serenity are an occasional respite from the many emergencies Ren has to address.  However, it’s Ren’s vacillation between compassion and rage that makes his story so gripping. 

THE GUIDE by Peter Heller

Twenty-five-year-old Jack is still grieving the death of this best friend when he accepts a job as a fishing guide at a VIP resort.  His first client is a famous singer named Alison, although he has never heard of her.  Soon they become wary of the whole operation, as some of the other clients are not fishing and come to breakfast looking pale and unhealthy, as opposed to how normal they looked the day before.  Spa treatments don’t usually have such a negative effect.  Alison and Jack team up to discover what is going on behind the scenes, particularly at a compound next door whose owner fires shots at trespassers.  Clues abound, and we readers may catch on a little sooner than Jack and Alison do, but once they start stirring the pot, mayhem erupts.  This book is a fast read, particularly since it is difficult to put down and not particularly intricately plotted.  I love Peter Heller thrillers, and this one is no exception, even when he waxes poetic about his love of nature.  I particularly enjoyed the dynamic between Jack and Alison and her ability to hold her own when the going gets tough.  She’s not too shabby with a fly rod, either, so that Jack admires her for all of the above.  She also has a pretty good voice, which Jack barely gets the opportunity to enjoy, what with all the other excitement.

THE ORCHARD by Peter Heller

This is my least favorite Peter Heller book, and it is not his usual adventure story.  In fact, it seems to be three characters in search of a plot, plus a slew of Chinese poetry.  This is just not my thing, although I love Heller’s writing style and his three lovable characters here, unencumbered by a storyline.  Frith and her mother, Hayley, have decamped to a remote Vermont cabin to live off the land and off the grid, although Hayley still translates ancient Chinese poetry as a side hustle to bring in some real money.  Otherwise, they are struggling to make ends meet by selling apples and maple syrup.  Rosie, a neighbor with a phone and the usual conveniences, becomes a welcome fixture at the cabin and sort of an adopted family member.  Firth narrates this story from her adult perspective as she reflects on her unconventional childhood.  I kept waiting for something to blow up this idyll, but what finally happens, although fairly monumental, isn’t sudden or unanticipated and doesn’t really disrupt the calm atmosphere of the novel to a significant degree.  I just needed more—a jolt of some sort or a trajectory toward something unexpected.

THE CEMETERY OF UNTOLD STORIES by Julia Alvarez

Alma Cruz has enjoyed a successful literary career in the U.S., but now she has inherited a piece of land in her homeland—the Dominican Republic.  She returns there with plans to create a cemetery for all of her unfinished stories, and she literally buries the manuscripts.  However, these stories, particularly the ones about her father and about Bienvenida Trujillo, refuse to be silent.  Alma hires a neighbor woman, Filomena, as caretaker and as a listener for the buried stories, which are narrated in this novel alongside those of Alma and Filomena.  I guess this is OK as far as magical realism goes, but it didn’t quite work for me.  Bienvenida Trujillo was the ex-wife of the murderous Dominican dictator, and apparently there is scant info about her life after the marriage ended.  Alvarez paints a complete but obviously somewhat fictional portrait of her that is one of the highlights of the novel, possibly second only to Filomena’s backstory.  Also, there’s a possible link between Filomena and one of the storytellers, but we never find out for sure.  That connection was the nugget that held my attention through the latter part of the book, but the author just left me hanging.  Afterlife is still my favorite Alvarez novel, by far.

¡YO! by Julia Alvarez

I’m not really a fan of novels that are a series of vignettes, but this one works for me.  The stories all revolve around Yolanda García, whose name is often shortened to Yo, which is the pronoun “I” in Spanish, hence the title.  We learn at the beginning that Yo has just published a piece of fiction in which her various family members recognize themselves as characters, and they are not too happy about it.  What follows are basically episodes involving people in Yo’s life, including her three husbands, a landlady whose husband beats her, an English professor who is endlessly writing letters of recommendation for her (“once in a career there comes a student”), a boyfriend posing as a journalist to keep their relationship under wraps, and an assortment of family members.  I found all of these stories captivating, but the most memorable and shocking one is near the end, with the too-benign title of “The Stalker.”  Another surprise is the final story, in which Yo’s father recounts how Yo’s penchant for storytelling as a child placed her entire family in jeopardy.  Yolanda herself is a bit of enigma, kind and caring, but at times regretful, as we all are.

IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES by Julia Alvarez

The Mirabal sisters are fighters, especially Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa, who, along with their husbands, join the resistance to Trujillo, murderous dictator of the Dominican Republic from the 1930s until 1961.  A fourth sister, Dede, who was not as involved in the mission to end Trujillo’s reign, stayed home the day her sisters were assassinated on their way home from visiting their husbands in prison. The author blends fact and fiction to construct a novel that looks back on the lives of the four sisters, with each of the chapters focused on one of them.  As the only survivor, Dede’s chapters dominate, but her rather mundane personal story does not. The backstories of the other sisters are not all that thrilling, either, and I was never clear on what motivated them to risk their lives in opposition to Trujillo.   This novel has merit as a history lesson, but I am not a fan of this type of semi-biographical fiction, as the author seems to be constrained by what actually happened.  I have found the same to be true of novels by T.C. Boyle, Alice Hoffman, Zadie Smith and Maggie O’Farrell in which they are fictionalizing the lives of historical figures.  However, I generally love these authors’ novels that spring strictly from their imaginations.  I think that Ariel Lawhon does a better job than most with writing an engrossing novel about a real person.  Perhaps she just chooses subjects whose lives are good fodder for a novel and are obscure enough to allow for some thrilling embellishments.