Diane Warren's debut novel, Juliet in August, won the prestigious Canadian Governor General's Award for fiction; it richly deserves the honor.
Juliet, Saskatchewan, is a tiny, dusty town on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills. In overlapping stories, Warren etches the lives of Juliet's people in the reader's memory. No pyrotechnics, nothing flamboyant, just perfect descriptions of the singular events that fill the days and nights in Juliet.
It's a hot and blowy day when a horse, a fine-looking Arab, shows up on Lee Torgeson's property. Lee is the foundling left on Lester and Astrid's porch many years ago. Now, his adoptive parents are gone and he is uncomfortable with this generous legacy left to him. He idly mounts the horse and sets out for a short ride that turns into the 100-mile centerpiece of the tale--a very long day spent ruminating, reminiscing, seeing people and sorting out what's next.
We meet Norval, the banker who grieves over the decisions he makes about poor farmers' loans and foreclosures. Blaine Dolson, a father with too many kids and a dithery wife, comes to an epiphany about his own culpability for his situation and a new balance is found in that household.
Lee rides dreamily through it all--he is a bit of a poet at heart--thinking about a long-ago similar ride done on a bet, remembering the words of Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye mighty and despair," finding objects long buried in the eternal sands. Such is the rhythm of a day in Juliet. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.