Post-Depression tale traverses US
The characters that populate Charles Frazier’s new novel “The Trackers” are all searching for something.
The narrator, Val, has journeyed from Virginia to Wyoming in 1937 to paint a mural in a post office as part of the Works Progress Administration, one of FDR’s projects to employ artists in the wake of the Great Depression. His local hosts are a wealthy rancher, John Long, and his wife, Eve. Long aspires to the U.S. Senate, and Eve, before she met him, rode the rails as a transient and sang in a swing band.
The book’s plot accelerates when Eve disappears and Long enlists Val to find out where she went and why. The landscape shifts from Wyoming to Florida to Seattle to San Francisco as Val travels the country, searching for Eve and revealing secrets that will change everything between the trio.
Frazier deftly blends a historical perspective throughout his fictional tale. The legacy of the Great Depression and America’s efforts to advance beyond it are omnipresent — from the ramshackle “Hoovervilles” populated by knife-wielding unhoused teens to the gleaming new airport in Tampa, Florida, where Val flies hoping to learn something about Jake, a young man Eve may or may not have married during her rail-riding days.
But just when you think Val is too cynical after living through the Great Depression, he finds Eve at a nightclub in San Francisco. It’s her story — and Val’s connection with her — that sparks hope and sets in motion the novel’s climax.
There’s a lot more worth savoring in “The Trackers,” including reflections on the meaning of art, the mythos of the American
West and what it really takes to start again. But Val is our narrator, and after a transcontinental adventure, the book satisfyingly ends where it began, with Val working on his mural in Dawes, Wyoming, adding a couple of final details to complete the painting. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press
Five teenagers stood together in the dark
and took turns firing a .22 caliber pistol into a shallow grave. Then they fell to their knees and swept dirt into it with their bare hands.
That’s how Alex Finlay’s “What Have We Done” starts, but who they killed and why is not revealed until late in this suspenseful thriller. Twenty-five years later, all five appear to be successful. Donnie is a rock star. Nico is the executive producer of a reality TV show. Arty is a high-tech millionaire. Benny is a judge. And Jenna recently retired from a career with a secretive government agency. But Donnie is an addict, Nico is a compulsive gambler and all are haunted by their past, which the author gradually reveals in a series of flashbacks.
The five had become friends when they were residents of Savior House,
a rural Chestertown, Pennsylvania, group home for unhoused teenagers. It was a terrible place where they were both physically and psychologically abused. Worse, teenage girls frequently went missing from the home. The disappearances were explained as runaways, but the five suspected something evil was afoot.
The action begins when the judge is murdered. Then someone tries to kill Donnie by throwing him off a cruise ship, and Nico is lured into a mine shaft and deliberately trapped in a cave-in. Both manage to escape, but before long, they and Jenna suspect that they are being targeted because of what they did at that long-ago grave. Together they make their way back to the now-abandoned group home to look for answers.
The first two books written under the pen name Finlay have earned the novelist a reputation for producing suspenseful, fast-paced thrillers. As usual, his characters are well-drawn, his writing is tight and vivid and he keeps readers guessing with a series of twists and red herrings all the way to his new yarn’s violent conclusion.