“The past never leaves you,” the grizzled Samuel Hawley tells his only daughter. “It’s like a shadow, always trying to catch up.” Indeed, with 12 healed bullet wounds pocking his massive frame, Samuel is reminded of his dubious personal history every time he undresses.
This strangely compelling novel – part ‘grit-lit’, part coming of age – starts with Samuel finally deciding to give up his itinerant lifestyle to make a proper home for 12-year-old Loo.
The unusual duo set up home in the small fishing town of Olympus, New England. Samuel’s wife – Loo’s mother – is long dead and Olympus is the town she grew up in. The pair hope this link will be enough to earn them some kind of welcome. Instead, they’re greeted with deep suspicion and it takes some Olympian accomplishments to break through the barriers that each of them faces in order to be accepted.
“The past never leaves you,” the grizzled Samuel Hawley tells his only daughter. “It’s like a shadow, always trying to catch up.” Indeed, with 12 healed bullet wounds pocking his massive frame, Samuel is reminded of his dubious personal history every time he undresses.
This strangely compelling novel – part ‘grit-lit’, part coming of age – starts with Samuel finally deciding to give up his itinerant lifestyle to make a proper home for 12-year-old Loo.
The unusual duo set up home in the small fishing town of Olympus, New England. Samuel’s wife – Loo’s mother – is long dead and Olympus is the town she grew up in. The pair hope this link will be enough to earn them some kind of welcome. Instead, they’re greeted with deep suspicion and it takes some Olympian accomplishments to break through the barriers that each of them faces in order to be accepted.
Loo, her father’s daughter through and through, delivers her tormentors a brutal lesson with surprising consequences. The fact she has inflicted grievous bodily harm upsets her father. But only because she was stupid enough to be caught.
Samuel, meanwhile, wins over the town with a Herculean feat of strength and balance while at the same time revealing his scarred body in all its tortured glory. The subsequent social visits from the town’s widows is pure comedy, which quickly turns to noir when one zealous widow meets with Loo’s newly-embraced scorn.
The chapters alternate between the present – in particular, Loo’s coming of age and her lessons of love and loyalty – and the back story to each of Samuel’s 12 bullet holes. Those near-death adventures involve everything from robbing gas stations to ill-advised break-ins and are errands of gruesome comedy and blistering tragedy.
While much can be made of its almost wild west-ish elements, at the core of this tenaciously well-told tale is the soft heart of the meaningful and loving relationship between father and daughter.
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