Surefire and surefooted
The Wild Heavens By Sarah Louise Butler (Douglas & Mcintyre) $22.95 | 272 pp
One of Moby-dick’s quotable lines — “for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men” — seems fitting for The Wild Heavens, an appealing novel about dicey quests.
Unexpectedly, debut author Sarah Louise Butler extracts philosophical juice from the hokey legend of the sasquatch and imbues a story of family and loss with that thoughtful substance.
She also sets a captivating plot in motion.
In a prologue set in the winter of 1920, a young seminarian named Aidan Fitzpatrick finds “an impossible set of tracks” while alone on a cedarforested mountain. They’re footprints, and twice the size of his own boots.
Soon after, Fitzpatrick spots a mysterious being with grizzled brown fur that stands nearly nine feet tall.
As the creature — “impossible,” “frightening,” “magnificent” — disappears into the grove, a beguiled Fitzpatrick realizes the foundation of his faith has begun to crumble and that course of his life is about to take an abrupt turn.
Fitzpatrick’s no obsessive captain of a whaling ship, but in him (and his descendants), glimpses of Ahab’s monomania are apparent.
As the novel proper opens in 2003, Fitzpatrick’s granddaughter Sandy is a longtime resident of rural B.C. (Butler herself lives in Nelson). On a sunrise after a snowstorm she awakens and is astonished to find “a single line of massive tracks,” footprints she hasn’t seen in decades. Over several dozen short, odd-numbered chapters, she trudges in deep snow ever further from home, seeking their maker.
She’s hiking alone and alert to the dangers but captivated by the sheer enigma of the tracks (and the answers she imagines the creature producing them can provide).
Butler’s longer even-numbered chapters relay Sandy’s history, which begins with her mother dying in Ontario when Sandy was a toddler; she’s adopted and raised by her granddad.
In a sense, though, Sandy’s tale begins in August of 1959, when she’s a “wiry, freckled” child of seven and intrigued by tracks shown to her by a boy named Luke (who’s also described as Sandy’s deceased husband-to-be).
Ever-absent, “Charlie,” as the family christens the elusive track-maker, nevertheless plays a crucial role in their fates.
The novel’s unfolding is both surefire and sure-footed.
In the brief chapters, as Sandy hikes and snowfall begins in earnest, questions mount about her uncertain fate: she comes face to face with the legendary animal and then what; alone, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the forest, what then?
Similarly, the destiny of Aidan, and the death of Luke (when and how?), and the future of his children with Sandy: Butler understands that mysteries hook more than just characters.
If “what happens next?” is built into the very essence of storytelling, “The Wild Heavens” capitalizes on any reader’s appetite for answers while also understanding the value of a question.
Like Herman Melville’s white whale and the “nameless horror” it induces, Charlie is a catalyst. The ensuing tragedies result from its shadowy presence.