Books by Month: July

“Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation’s disquieting and violent contradictions.” — from publisher.

Pete Snow is a social worker in a small Montana town trying his best to help struggling families. By doing so, he is also hiding from and trying to make up for his own parental failures. When a young, feral boy wanders into a public school, Pete is called in. He finds out from the boy, Benjamin, that he and his father are living in the wilderness. Wanting to help the Benjamin, he reluctantly agrees to follow him to their current camp site where he first meets Jeremiah Pearl. The meeting does not go well. As Pete continues to provide any small support he can to the boy and his father, he learns more about the paranoid, survivalist family. Through his persistence, he gains Jeremiah’s tentative trust. But as his own family unravels with rapid speed, Pete is pulled in many different directions. Then, the FBI becomes very interested in Jeremiah Pearl, and Pete is caught in the eye of the storm.

This story is far from an upbeat summer read, but I’m glad I came across it. It is so realistic and raw that the pages practically bleed out the words. Like in real life, the conflicts in this story mainly come from people making incorrect assumptions and misunderstanding those around them, themselves, the situations they find themselves in, ideas of what is right and wrong, and what justice entails. The contradictions of society, freedom, and politics are put under a magnifying glass and thrust in our faces. This is a story that so many people would see themselves in as if looking in a mirror, though the image we glance may make us look away in shame. Smith Henderson does not turn away. He makes us look into our darkest corners, makes us really look at that stranger on the side of the street that we instinctively avert our eyes from. Makes us ask ourselves what truly makes us so different.