From June 9th, 2008: Take A Tour of Winter Haven by Athol Dickson.
“Mousy” and vulnerable accountant Vera Gamble’s eyes are x-raying a computer screen for a few dollars and cents on a Friday afternoon when she receives an unusual telephone call from the police chief of an unknown-to-her island town in Maine. Shortly afterward as she strives for control of her emotional reaction to the call, her handsome boss manipulates her into spending her weekend working to finish the figures on an apparently important account due for presentation on the following Monday, her birthday, not even considering that her first reaction to stay in Texas might be borne out of a rejection to the grief and that he had previously assured her of getting her birthday off.
The story begins with her first person telling of roiling seasickness on a mail boat making its regular excursion out to the island of Winter Haven where her estranged, and absent for 13 years, brother “Siggy” lies in wait of extradition for burial back in Texas. As her fateful trip to the island produces both vomiting and the regurgitation of events leading to the decision to travel for retrieval of her autistic brother’s body, she does the unspeakable just before her arrival to the remarkable but austere island location, allowing her memories to produce a near white-out of sorts in her brain.
She discovers upon arrival and after introductions that her brother is being held in an old fish packing shed, literally packed in ice awaiting departure since Winter Haven has no mortuary. Without actually seeing his corpse she declares the dead person cannot be her brother, realizing the size of the person lying in the shadows of the shed is a young person, and her brother would now be a man in his late twenties. However, before she finally exits this poor excuse for a funeral home, she decides to look directly at the boy to confirm the mistaken identification. To her amazement it is Siggy looking just as he did 13 years ago when he left home spouting prophecy from his autistic dialogue of the Scriptures.
Immediately the reader is plunged into the mystery of Vera and her family, how she has become who she perceives herself to be, and how she blames herself for the ill-fated and untimely death of her brother who looks no different than the precise moment she watched him walk away from home, alone, some 13 years ago on her birthday.
This is an interesting and utterly intriguing mystery where the features of the island itself are as much individual characters in the story as are the unique and somewhat bizarre folks who inhabit this eerie town. There are suspicious occurrences, freakish townspeople, a sense of life itself being drained out of Winter Haven’s inhabitants while Vera herself is uncertain of what is untrue and what is actually happening both in her head and on the island. Her dark mental adventures, as she simultaneously (along with the man who is “the law”) determines to discover how her brother could not possibly have changed in 13 years, nearly convince the reader Vera is out of her mind or soon will be without some honest and reliable information and assistance.
Athol Dickson, winner of a prestigious Christy Award for his earlier novel River Rising, is known for his lovely layered prose, and this novel is no exception to his rule. A condemning God versus a forgiving and merciful Lord is examined within the pages of this story, and the journey to find who this God really is continues through the supernatural events mixed with imaginary thoughts tied seamlessly to what you hope is a form of reality—all this alongside the search for how Siggy could possibly turn up in Winter Haven, Maine, exactly how he left home in Texas 13 years ago. There are jolting twists and turns with a satisfying conclusion which the cynics in the crowd of readers who prefer “dark and dreary” will no doubt criticize. I, for one, appreciated the ending and was grateful for it.
Let me give you just a taste of some of this delicious writing from Chapter 15 . . .
“I was the daughter of a healer and the sister of a prophet. I knew some kinds of calculations—the ones that mattered most—would never yield an answer. Sometimes you could add one more complaint to another and multiply by every form of misery there was and divide by all the heartache in the world, and even if you reached infinity, the sum of all your questions would still be met with nothing but an evil whisper, a vacant stare, or else a silence like the taste of lukewarm water, the feel of empty air, a vision of the color white. When it comes to evil, God does not explain.”
Athol captures all the angst and torment of a young woman who has carried both guilt and condemnation for most of her existence, having attempted to bury it all beneath the compulsive obsession of orderly numbers and mathematical equations. When she is rousted from her pedestrian and lifeless cocoon of accounting, all hell breaks loose in her memories and in her life-threatening and life-changing experiences during her tour of Winter Haven.
If you’re a fan of moody mysteries, you’ll enjoy this unique and well-written story.
Father, I pray you would continue to bless Athol, to give him inspiration, more stories to tell, and allow the beauty of language to come forth from his creations. Keep him busy with the work you have for him to do and remind him that every good and perfect gift comes from you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.