Machismo is strewn on the rocks in novel

Updated Huck Finn puts new spin on adventure story, upending expectations

Raft of Stars Andrew J. Graff Ecco

Set mainly on a river in rural northern Wisconsin, Andrew J. Graff 's earthy adventure tale, Raft of Stars centres on two boys running away from home — with the police and other grown-ups trying to find them. Of course, there are perilous rapids and black bears ready to do in the naive, risk-taking humans.

Outdoorsy tales like this, from Hemingway's early Michigan stories to James Dickey's Deliverance on down, typically use woods and waterways as proving grounds for masculinity. But Graff wants to unravel some of the expectations of the genre. Nature, here, isn't impressed with masculinity at all, and it's prepared to smash machismo against its rocks along with anything else.

Before it delves into any of that, though, it comes on like an updated Huck Finn tale. Two 10-year-old boys, Fischer and Dale head to the river from the hamlet of Claypot after Fischer shoots Dale's abusive, alcoholic father. Terrified of what the police will do to them — especially Dale, who's now orphaned — they plan to head to the National Guard armory where Fischer says his dad is stationed.

Fischer is dodging not just a potential murder charge, but also his past: Unknown to Dale, Fischer's father was killed in action in the Gulf War. (The novel is set in 1994 — largely, it seems, so none of the characters can easily communicate with cellphones.) And Dale is eager to ditch his own history: “Breadwin was a name everyone knew in Claypot. It was synonymous with cheap auto work and the worst kind of man.”

Fischer and Dale are nicknamed Fish and Bread — Graff couldn't make the boys' earthiness any clearer if Raft of Stars had come packaged with a clod of river mud. But the boys are still boys, amateurishly prone to foolish notions of survival.

Short on food, they concoct a stew of worms and chewing tobacco, which goes down as well as you'd expect.

Here's where the real men usually step in.

But chasing them from one direction are Cal, a sheriff recently from Houston and inept in the Midwestern wilderness; and Teddy, Fish's grandfather, an experienced outdoorsman who's slowed by age.

Chasing the boys from another direction, and somewhat more competently, are Fish's mom, Miranda, and Tiffany, a young down-at-the-heels gas-station clerk who's a romantic interest for Cal — until Graff starts tweaking that familiar expectation as well. The two pairs both suffer embarrassments and humiliations on the trip, but the overall effect is that of boys' story without being a stubbornly manly one.

And though the novel isn't an outright tragedy, there's little that feels triumphant. Mostly what the woods and river do are flatten our humanity into pure survival mode. Along the way, Graff upends our expectations of adventure stories: We want all of the terror that comes with being left to our own devices — it's just that a macho hero needn't be at the centre of it.