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Fire Point: A Novel - Hardcover

Smolens, John

 
9780609611043: Fire Point: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0609611046 ISBN 13: 9780609611043
Verlag: Crown Pub, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Returning to Michigan's Upper Peninusla on the northern shore of Lake Superior where he spent his childhood vacations, Martin Reed falls in love with Hannah LeClaire, a beautiful young woman who shares his dream of restoring a crumbling old house, but Hannah's ex-boyfriend, Sean, the son of a local police officer, will do anything to destroy their happiness. 30,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JOHN SMOLENS is a professor of English and the author of several novels, including Cold. Visit his website at www.johnsmolens.com.

Aus dem Klappentext

The critically acclaimed author of Cold returns with a thrilling and suspenseful story of love, vengeance, and renewal, set against the pristine beauty of one of America s great inland seas.

At nineteen, Hannah LeClaire already has a reputation in the village of Whitefish Harbor, where she grew up. She is a solitary young woman who is given to long walks along the coast of Lake Superior. On a cold April day, she wanders into a dilapidated house and is startled by a stranger. Martin Reed, ten years her senior, has moved to Michigan s remote Upper Peninsula to renovate the condemned Victorian once owned by his aunt. Quickly Hannah realizes that Martin is an outcast, too, and unlike anyone she has ever met.

Fire Point is the story of the summer Hannah and Martin attempt to rebuild their lives while restoring the house with the help of Martin s cousin, a wily carpenter named Pearly. When Sean Colby, the son of a local police officer, returns to Michigan after being discharged early from military service, he cannot accept the fact that Hannah, his former girlfriend, is building a new life without him. As Sean commits a series of increasingly violent acts against Hannah, Martin, and the house, Whitefish Harbor is caught up in a passion play of vengeance and retribution.

In spare, graceful prose, Smolens again demonstrates his skill in rendering scenes of stunning brutality and uncommon tenderness (Publishers Weekly), which brought his recent novels Cold and The Invisible World international acclaim. Fire Point is an exquisite American story that examines the boundaries of forgiveness and redemption.

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1


If he had a religion, it was that things in this world ought to be plumb, level, and square. He was forty-four and had lived his entire life in Whitefish Harbor, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a village on a hilly node of land that juts into Lake Superior. His full name was Joseph Pearl Blankenship Jr. To distinguish him from his father, a Canadian ore boat crewman who was washed overboard during a squall in November 1956, his mother always called him Pearly. Her maiden name was Janet Pearl Hanninen. Her mother was Ojibwa; her father, a Finnish miner. She died violently, too, in the spring of 1974. While driving home from Marquette in a blizzard, a cement truck veered into her lane and hit her Ford Fairlane head-on. Pearly was only comforted by the fact that the impact was so great, there was no time for her brain to register pain as her body was thrust into the backseat by the car's engine; however, he was certain that there had been a moment--the notorious split second--when she was horrified by the sight of the oncoming truck.

Sometimes Pearly believed he could see them both, his mother, crushed and bloodied beyond recognition, and his father, bloated and adrift in the deep, cold waters of Lake Superior. He was convinced that they still resided where they had died. His father was in the better place. After his death his mother became a taciturn, bitter woman, and, not surprisingly, a drinker. Pearly hoped that if his father could find refuge at the bottom of his beloved Lake Superior, his mother, at the very least, might be allowed her tumbler of whiskey, her chaser of beer. Because of the way his parents had died, he suspected that he, too, would die violently.

He knew what people thought of him and, to put it politely, he didn't care. He was a loner, but then it had always been a Yooper's privilege to be left in peace. If he hadn't lived in his dead mother's house, he'd have had difficulty keeping a roof over his head. His jobs were mostly seasonal; long spells during the winter months you'd find him mid-afternoon in the Hiawatha Diner or, more likely, the Portage, one of the bars along Ottawa Street. If there was a problem, something that might involve the police, the first name that came to mind was Pearly. Yet some, particularly older folks, also knew that he frequented the public library. And to be fair, he was a good house carpenter. If he repaired a roof, it wouldn't leak; if he hung a door, it wouldn't stick. If he had a philosophy, it was that things in this world ought to be plumb, level, and square, but seldom are.


2


Hannah Leclaire climbed the steep path carved in the bluff overlooking Lake Superior. She was nineteen, her legs were strong again, and she liked to walk, even on such overcast afternoons, when the damp east wind could make April seem colder than January. From below she could hear the pounding of the breakers on the rocks. She reached the top of the bluff, walked through woods toward the old house, and paused at the edge of the backyard. The property was in miserable condition: cracked and split clapboards with peeling white paint, broken windowpanes, mullions in need of glazing, black shutters sagging of their own weight.

Something was different this time. Hannah noticed that the back door was ajar, and she waded through chest-high weeds toward the house. She squeezed through the door sideways and entered a dim kitchen. Plaster crackled beneath her boots as she moved through the rooms on the first floor. There was a powerful smell--the scent of animal decay--which caused her to hold her wool scarf over her nose and mouth. She tried going out the front door, but it wouldn't open, so she decided to return to the kitchen. Halfway down the front hall she stopped and let out a gasp as a man stepped out from the shadows beneath the staircase.

"That stink is really something," he said. There was the slightest gleam and she realized she was looking at the roundness of the man's skull.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Dead cats." He took another step toward her--he was tall and lean, his head was shaved, and a trim mustache seemed to give his face definition. He might have been ten years older than she was, and kept his hands visible as if to show that he wasn't dangerous.

"Whose cats?" she said.

"Vivian Pence's--the last of the family line," he said. "Seems she had a house full of cats, I suspect." His eyes were pale blue and he was wearing an old overcoat, dark wool, knee-length, with the collar turned up.

"What are you doing here?"

"That's just what I've been asking myself," he said. "You've been here before?"

She hesitated. "I walk here a lot. The back door--I never noticed that it was open before." He smiled, which she took to mean that he was responsible. "The house is condemned," she said. "They're going to tear it down."

"Who is?"

"The town, or maybe it was the county--there was a piece in the paper." She raised her eyes to the hall ceiling. Large sections of plaster were missing, exposing wood lath beneath. "It's sad. Something should be done."

"Someone would have to buy it, then invest a lot of time," he said. "And money."

"I remember coming here on Halloween. All the kids were afraid of the old woman--Vivian Pence. So naturally we wanted to come up here and see inside. That was ten years ago. The last time I was in this house I was nine."

"What were you when you were nine?"

"A gypsy, I think."

"That makes you, what, nineteen? I thought you were older."

Hannah wanted to explain--she wanted to say that she should have graduated from high school last year, with the class of '95. But she didn't, and he nodded his head once--it seemed like an old-fashioned gesture of courtesy--and walked into the kitchen and out the back door.

She suddenly felt weak and sat on the bottom step of the staircase. Her heart was beating fast, and for a moment she could only stare at a knot in the worn tread. Raising her head, she watched as the man passed by the window above the stairs. Quickly, she went out through the kitchen door and up the overgrown driveway. He was climbing into a gray car, something vintage but well maintained, something European. He rolled down the window and said, "A lift in to the village?"

She hesitated.

"I understand," he said.

She walked across the gravel and got in the car; it had bucket seats, black leather that smelled rich and creaked beneath her. When he turned on the ignition, the engine rumbled deeply. She watched his hand work the stick shift--the knob looked like it was made from ivory.

"What is this? Looks like it belongs in a black-and-white movie."

"It's a Mercedes."

He put the car in gear and drove halfway down the hill, where he pulled over to the side of the road. "Ever drive a standard?" For some reason the question seemed incredibly personal. Before she could answer, he said, "Care to learn? Not here on the hill, but in the parking lot by the harbor--that would be perfect. No traffic. Not until you get the hang of it, working the clutch and stick."

She could see that his skull was covered with fine black stubble. His eyes were direct yet acquiescent. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Old enough to give a driving lesson."

"Are you thirty?"

"I will be next winter. Why?"

"I should get home. It'll be dark soon."

"All right. Perhaps another time."


Martin Reed's mother was from Whitefish Harbor, so since he was a boy he had...

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Verlag
Crown Pub
Erscheinungsdatum
2004
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0609611046
ISBN 13 
9780609611043
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
256
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