Death, grief and forgiveness are themes that coalesce like a raging storm then settle into a quiet, transformative whisper in Ryan Bartelmay's Onward Toward What We're Going Toward, a haunting novel about two brothers and their wives, lost and lonely individuals searching for connection and meaning in small-town America.
Scarred emotionally by the suicide of their father, Chic and Buddy Waldbeeser each carry this pain into their adult relationships--Buddy as a coin-collecting, self-absorbed hermit who talks to the ghost of his father, Chic as the temperate, aw-shucks type who lusts after Buddy's wife, Lijy, while playing the role of dutiful husband and father. Scandal befalls one brother while the other suffers a tragedy that shakes his faith and belief to the core. One must find it in himself to forgive the other; the other must find it within himself to survive beyond simply existing and satisfying mere appetites.
Yet just as readers expect to suffer through more bitterness and heartbreak, Bartelmay provides Chic and Buddy with a defining moment that absolves them of their despair and self-loathing. His crisp writing reveals the longing we feel for something within our power to experience that nevertheless skirts beyond our grasp--until time takes its final, defiant toll. Onward Toward What We're Going Toward aches for the warmth of a loving embrace, begging us for the forgiveness each character so desperately desires. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant