American Spirits

November 27, 2023
Banks’s elegant tryptic of novellas, arriving a year after his death at 82, evoke a hardscrabble Upstate New York setting reminiscent of his novels The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone. Each story touches on themes of community, family, and survival in small-town Sam Dent, N.Y., where hiking and hunting are prized and everyone knows one another. “Nowhere Man” starts with a minor confrontation between local hunter Doug and brusque businessman Yuri Zingerman, who owns property in the area but lives elsewhere. After Yuri tells Doug not to hunt on his land, Doug does so anyway, with his young son in tow. From there, the narrative steadily intensifies into a grudge match whose outcome on is both inevitable and devastating. “Homeschooling” follows the slow descent of Judith and Claire Weber, whose progressive parenting of their adopted children sets tongues wagging. After their neighbors grow concerned that the children are being neglected, the family edges to the brink of tragedy. The intimate and propulsive “Kidnapped” is a macabre tale about the Dent family that gave the town its name. Told in a wry and folksy first person, its tangled plot involves not only kidnapping but blackmail, murder, and a late night heart-to-heart over Double Quarter Pounders. As ever, the reader senses the confidence in Banks’s narrative voice. This is a welcome addition to the legacy of a master storyteller.