Traveler

October 9, 2006
Struggling actor Jono Riley, the narrator of McLarty's second novel (after The Memory of Running
), is getting older—he's been tending bar for nearly 30 years—but his roles aren't getting any better. After he receives a letter from his childhood friend, Cubby, informing him that Cubby's sister, Marie, (the first girl Jono loved) has died, Jono takes temporary leave of the bar where he works and Renée Levesque, his girlfriend and an 18-year veteran of the New York City fire department. He goes home to East Providence, R.I., where he learns the cause of Marie's death: a bullet that was lodged in her shoulder after a freak, unsolved shooting during her childhood "traveled" and pinched an artery. Jono, with the help of retired cop Kenny Snowden, who was a young police officer when Marie was shot and has never forgotten the case, begins looking into the long-ago shooting. Friends and enemies from Jono's childhood still linger around East Providence, and the petty rivalries and deep bonds of the past take on new significance as the investigation grows in scope and points to an unlikely suspect. Frequent flashbacks add color to Jono's adult insecurities, and McLarty's prose remains convincing without crossing into treacly turf.

Thomas Wolfe be damned! Not only can you go home again--there are times when you must. That's the underpinning of Ron McLarty's beguiling new novel, which alternates between two worlds--the close-knit existence of first-generation working-class Americans in East Providence in the early 1960s and the nonprofit theater world early in this century. Jono Riley, a kid then, is a bartender and part-time actor now. What propels the plot backward and forward is the stuff of the mystery infusing the tale. McLarty himself is a familiar face and voice from his work as a character actor and audiobook narrator. He brings just the right nuances and hints of accents, gender, and age to his cast of characters. When melded with vivid reflections of place, they make his story wondrously poignant and completely real. M.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine