The Signal by Ron Carlson will be published by Viking in June. It’s not the sort of book that you’d expect an eastern “city slicker” (JE’s apt description) like me to read. Why not? It’s a mystery and adventure novel set in the wild country of Wyoming. Mack is an inarticulate, ex-rancher who is having problems fitting in. Growing up, he helped his father run a guest ranch. But after his father dies, Mack finds he is too anti-social to be in the hospitality business…too much meet and greet required in that line of work.
I know how he feels. I’m not much of a people person myself. But if I want to be alone, there is no better place to be than Fifth Avenue. Mack has a different approach…he may not be much of a talker but he is a superior outdoorsman: we find him in the mountains at the opening of The Signal.
He is waiting at a trailhead as the dusk settles for his ex-wife, Vonnie. Every year for the past ten, they have taken this wilderness trek. Now the marriage has collapsed like a rock slide. But they are still friends of a kind and Vonnie has agreed to this one last trip.
You can get a grip on the rocks, the lakes, the fish, the elk, in every chapter of The Signal. Also, a fine sense of why people would want to camp. There are a couple of great scenes where Vonnie and Mack just react to the weather, to cooking simple meals and discovering the world as if it was the first time planet earth was there and they were among the only dozen people who had ever seen it. The wonder that the earth is there and that it’s so beautiful, so wild, as if the words “beautiful” and “wild” were synonyms. Are you reading this JE?
But that’s not the best part of this western story…that’s the backdrop…a complex natural syntax, for the dialogue between Mack and Vonnie…what they are like and why their marriage fell apart and why…they are still friends.
Also part of the best part is a character study of Mack…told in flashbacks, of how his ineptness with people leads to a life as a petty criminal and to having a hidden agenda for this last trip with his ex-wife, who, incidentally, has a new man, a city slicker, in her life.
There’s lots of suspense and action in this tale as Mack reaps the consequences for falling helter-skelter into a life of crime. But what I enjoyed most was how Ron Carlson makes me wonder whether I liked Mack or not…small-time sucker of a crook…but in the mountains…more of a sovereign. Decide about Mack for yourself…you’ll enjoy the challenge.
Also, Mr Carlson, I’ll make a big concession. The mountains of Wyoming have it beat over Central Park. But city slickers and east-of-the-Mississippi types, don’t think this isn’t your kind of book. One of the reasons I wanted to write this review is to prove you wrong. It’s great storytelling and unputdownable.
-DH
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