A few years ago I sat next to John Smolens at a table in the "authors tent" at the annual Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise, Michigan, near the top of the eastern U.P. It seemed an unlikely locale for the world-wide release of his latest novel, "Fire Point". But then, perhaps it wasn't after all. Smolens is an English professor at Northern Michigan University, and the setting for his new book is, once again, the U.P. The town, Whitefish Harbor, is fictional. As he did in his previous novel, "Cold", Smolens tantalizes readers like me who read with an atlas close at hand with town names that are "almost" real, employing parts of real place names, but putting them in slightly the wrong place. All you know for sure is that the story takes place somewhere near Marquette, on the shores of Lake Superior.
Whitefish Harbor, like the real villages of Paradise, Trout Lake or Grand Marais, is instantly recognizable as one of those small, isolated often soul-deadening communities surrounded by sand, swamps and second-growth scrub pine forests, which survives mostly on the tourist trade during the brief months of summer. This insular small-town setting is key to the novel's events (which take place over a six-month period from April to September), as they delicately and inevitably unfold in the inimitable prose style Smolens has established and perfected in his earlier work. Employment opportunities are few and severely limited. A key character is introduced in the following manner: "Places like Whitefish Harbor send kids like Sean Colby out into the world after high school. They go to college, they enlist in the service."
Sean Colby could easily be listed as the villain of "Fire Point", but that would be oversimplifying an extremely intricate feat of story-telling, because as the plot evolves, you learn a bit about his childhood and are privy to a not very pretty picture of his parents' marriage and their own particular disappointments and failings. You quickly come to the conclusion that there are no clear-cut good guys or bad guys in this tale, only regular people with all the usual complexities who are trying to find their place in a life they didn't necessarily choose.
Hannah LeClaire, a mature 19 year-old, is the girl all the boys and men in town follow longingly with their eyes, but she had given herself, too soon, to Sean Colby the previous year. A fatherless loner herself, Hannah was drawn to Sean's "leader of the pack" aura. But something was "twisted" in Sean, and when Hannah became pregnant, he gave in to the "solution" proposed by his parents, then disappeared into the army. Ten months later, discharged early for not yet clear reasons, Sean shows up back in Whitefish Harbor and begins stalking Hannah and her new boyfriend, 29 year-old Martin Reed, a Chicago man who had spent his childhood summers in the village, his mother's hometown.
Early on in the narrative, Reed would appear to be the obvious hero of the piece, but nothing is ever quite what it appears to be in Smolens' fiction. Likely heroes become victims and unlikely people become heroes.
Joseph "Pearly" Blankenship Jr., 44 years old, part Ojibwa Indian, loner, barfly, and sometime carpenter, is such an unlikely hero. Involved in an inertia-fed listless affair with a local bartender, who is yet another single mom in a sea of failed relationships, Pearly is almost a stereotypical product of his town, except for one thing. He reads. Probably the most prolific borrower from the town library, he knows his Shakespeare, as well as when to use "whom vs. who." An anomaly in a town of non-readers and small-minded failures, Pearly has become the primary "usual suspect" any time a civic prank or petty crime occurs. He is regularly detained, harrassed and humiliated by Frank Colby, Sean's father and a frustrated long-time cop who knows he will never be chief of police. That post is held by Buzz Gagnon, an overweight cartoon of a law enforcement officer who can't stop himself from snacking on whatever is at hand as he questions suspects and is more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with solving crimes. Hounded by Colby, Pearly is regularly defended by Owen Nault III, who, like Frank Colby, grew up in Whitefish Harbor with Pearly. Owen went away to college and law school, but ended up back in the family practice, doomed to defend people like Pearly who can't afford lawyers, so he has learned to take his fees in trade -- a remodeled bathroom or a properly hung door. And even at that, Naught undoubtedly gets the better end of the deal, since Pearly is, despite his questionable reputation, a very competent carpenter whose personal philosophy, if he has one, is "that things in this world ought to be plumb, level, and square, but seldom are."
Pearly is hired by Martin (a distant cousin) to help restore a large old house in town where Martin and Hannah plan to live and rent the two upper floors for income. The jealously obsessive Sean, hired by the village as a summer cop, lurks about the fringes of their lives and attempts, with increasingly violent acts of vandalism and sabotage, to disrupt their plans.
Every detail and every character fit seamlessly into the rapidly spiraling events that draw the reader full bore into the escalating violence that moves inexorably toward an unexpected and shocking climax Smolens' writing is spare and direct, with that stripped-to-the-bone clarity and precision that his readers have come to expect. "Fire Point" is not just another thriller, or "a novel of suspense", as its jacket proclaims. It is finely crafted, good -- perhaps even great -- literature. Pearly Blankenship and Hannah LeClaire are characters who will stay with you for a long time after closing the covers. ( )