How do survivors carry on after their lives are scarred by tragedy? What causes a legacy of violence to echo from one generation to the next? Those are the questions John Burnham Schwartz poses and answers in this moving sequel to his 1998 novel Reservation Road.
Like its predecessor, Northwest Corner begins with an act of violence. This time it's not an automobile accident, but a blow with a baseball bat that ends a bar fight. It's administered by Sam Arno, a college baseball star and son of Dwight Arno, whose reckless driving 12 years earlier killed 10-year-old Josh Learner. Sam flees from Connecticut to Santa Barbara, where Dwight is attempting to fashion a new life for himself as the manager of a sporting goods store, after losing his law license and serving 30 months in prison.
Schwartz again employs a chorus of voices--Sam; Dwight and his ex-wife, Ruth; Josh's mother, Grace, and her daughter, Emma; and Dwight's friend Penny--their lives and perspectives intertwining in a complex counterpoint. Each struggles with the implacable realities of loss and grief, unable to elude an essential fact: "We think we are solid and durable, only to find that, placed under a cruel and unexpected light, we are the opposite: only our thin, permeable skin holds us intact."
Although Schwartz's novel can be appreciated without reference to Reservation Road, it will be especially rewarding for anyone who valued the characterization, psychological insight and narrative suspense that marked the earlier work. It's unlikely we'll see the Arnos or the Learners again, but we can be grateful to their creator for allowing us to leave them with a fuller sense of their lives. --Harvey Freedenberg