True North

Christopher Lane becomes David Burkett in this novel centered around a family descended from wealthy timber barons. He is at home portraying Burkett's angst over what his family has done to the landscape and the people around them, clearly communicating Burkett's depression, self-deprecation, and self-pity in equal parts. While Burkett is not a particularly likable hero, Lane succeeds in creating a sympathetic take on the young man as he navigates through making amends for his own comfort at the expense of the great woods around him. Even as Burkett's father becomes more and more unbelievable in his malevolence, Lane keeps him credible through his human reading. Both his humanity and his narration of Harrison's beautiful nature prose make this an audiobook worth exploring. H.L.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

April 5, 2004
If the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, what should a son do to provide moral recompense? In Harrison's earnest, initially riveting new novel, narrator David Burkett decides as a teenager in the 1960s that he must rectify the ecological damage done to his beloved Upper Peninsula area of Michigan by his rapacious timber baron ancestors. More immediately, he vows to tell the world about the rapes and abuses committed by his alcoholic father, a charismatic Yale graduate with an egregious sense of entitlement. After a foray into organized religion, David finds spiritual solace in the stark natural world, described by Harrison in soaring prose. Unable to sustain emotional connection with any woman other than his older sister, David has brief liaisons with four women, but he feels more pain over the death of his dog than of his marriage. Meanwhile, he spends decades working on a history of his despised family, only to realize that he is a dud as a writer. By this time, he's in his late 30s, a man who has never achieved maturity because his father hangs like an albatross around his neck. A master of surprise endings (Dalva
, etc.), Harrison pulls off a bravura climax when David attempts to reconcile with his feckless father. By this time, though, the reader may have tired of the monochromatic narrative, composed mainly of David's anguished introspection and depressed dreams. Still, Harrison's tragic sense of history and his ironic insight into the depravities of human nature are as potent as ever and bring deeper meaning to his (eventually) redemptive tale. Agent, Bob Dattila at Phoenix Literary Agency. (May)

Forecast:
Like his well-received memoir,
Off to the Side, this meaty novel gives Harrison—screenwriter, food critic, journalist and prolific novelist—the room to explore his native Michigan and its complicated citizens in rich and lengthy detail.