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 with a gentle touch in this moving sequel to his popular 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, "a pathetic tracing of his father's running from his crime twelve years ago," 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.
Echoing the narrative technique of Reservation Road, Schwartz 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--with 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."
There are echoes of Rosellen Brown's outstanding Before and After in Schwartz's story. Like the parents in Brown's novel who must come to terms with their teenage son's inexplicably violent act, it's easy to picture Schwartz's characters leading comfortable upper-middle-class lives in a bucolic corner of Connecticut but for the sudden intercession of the unexpected. And he offers an at times uncomfortable reminder that the wall dividing joy from tragedy is a mere illusion, teaching a "gloomier truth"--that "the breakage usually happens in an instant, life changing in a single wordless act."
Although Schwartz's novel can be appreciated without reference to Reservation Road, it will be especially rewarding for anyone who valued the depth of characterization, keen psychological insight and ability to sustain 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
Shelf Talker: In this moving sequel to his novel Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz explores the aftermath of a tragedy 12 years later.