Book Review

By Derryll White

Heller, Peter (2019). The River.

Some say the world will end in fire,

            Some say in ice.

            From what I’ve tasted of desire

            I hold with those who favor fire.

            But if it had to perish twice,

            I think I know enough of hate

            To say that for destruction ice

            Is also great

            And would suffice                                           — Robert Frost

Peter Heller has a strong clear voice, catching the elements of wilderness that make it most appealing. It is clear that he knows his way around in the remote backcountry and he pays attention to what is happening – weather, terrain, animals, plants and foliage.

Heller has fun, parsing William Carlos William’s poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’, laughing at a bald eagle too full to fly. There is exuberance in his writing that tempers the drama; gives it more life.

Jack and Wynn, the two main male characters, evolve with the story. Theirs is an intimate male bonding forged through strenuous wilderness trips and the trust built through selfless service to each other in times of jeopardy and fear. They share the quiet hidden secrets that craft a man.

Peter Heller develops this quietly and intently. To anyone with experience of this – military, long-time outdoorsman, bikers, loggers – his prose rings true. The tension builds with real events such as deep hunger, and is resolved reasonably by fishing for Brookies.

Heller lays out the largesse of nature, blueberries and Brook Trout, in a natural way. He does the same with the overwhelming power of fire and the fear it induces. His prose catches everything – beauty, fear, nature, reason, human weakness – and moves the reader up the wild trail of the story.

There are surprises here, and unanticipated strengths. Peter Heller moved me to real tears, something that happens rarely. This may be the best book I will read this year.

****

Excerpts from the novel:

MAPLE SUGAR – Sometimes they boiled all night. At dawn the sun washed the patchy snow in a rose light, and the daybreak wind rattled the dried leaves of the oaks and the bare branches of the maples, and he heard the rush of the snowmelt brook, the songs of the nuthatch. The fire crackled under the long pan of clear sap and he and his dad didn’t say much, but he was aware enough – he’d read enough fiction, he guessed – to realize that these might be the best hours he and his father ever spent together.

ZEN – If jack hummed, Wynn talked to himself, especially while making his Thingamajigs. What jack called them. Wynn was crazy about Goldsworthy, the environmental sculptor, and was in awe of the ethic of ephemeral art from Buddhist sandpainting to the sapling moons of Jay Mead. The untethering of ego: the purity of creating something that wouldn’t even be around to sign in a matter of hours or days. What that said about ownership and the impermanence of all things.

STRENGTH – And he didn’t seem to mind being cold and wet or exhausted the way other people did. It wasn’t fun, but then life wasn’t meant to be that fun. That was the difference, Wynn thought. For jack, stuff like cold and hunger didn’t have a value, good or bad, they just were, and it was best if they didn’t last that long; but, if they did, as long as one survived them, no harm, no foul. It gave jack a strength, a temper that Wynn admired.

STORYTELLING – Jack did notice one thing and it was something he loved about his uncle: Lloyd never embellished the bones of a hunting or fishing story. The fish never got bigger nor the rack of the bull elk wider. Inches, feet, miles, weather, were all surprisingly accurate. Shayne said that Lloyd had once told him that a great storyteller had to know when never to lie. “Hunting and fishing’s so much fun,” he said, “only a puissant needs to lie about it.”

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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