GLR January-February Supplement 2024

phones and typewriters. No one seems to own the pre-Internet personal computers or brick-size cellphones of that era. Among the eight characters given their own chapters, there’s the secretary who’s being brutalized by her husband and the young married policeman who tries to help her. There’s the po liceman’s wife, who’s suffering from postpartum depression and perhaps other kinds of mental illness. There’s the closeted bi sexual high school student who struggles with his weight. There’s the town’s sole physician, who’s the recipient of many of his patients’ secrets, whether physically revealed or shame fully confessed. And there is the doctor’s wife, who’s in love with her best friend and trying to keep their relationship hidden so as not to ruin their own lives and those of their husbands and children. “After all these years together, Bev’s heart still cart wheels against her ribs at Tru’s touch, the feel of her mouth warm and soft against her own. It was never like this with any man, not even Bill when he was lean and long-haired and al ways laughing. Bev had no idea it could be like this.” Eventually, two crises disrupt the superficially peaceful con tinuity of the town. A life is saved, and a life is lost. From there the novel veers off to follow the aftermath of the tragedy while leaving behind the fallout from a disaster averted. Bowring does a beautiful job of revealing how those left in the wake of the death handle its impact, from the man whose enthusiasm for hunting deer is spoiled during a weekend in the woods, to the descent into alcoholism and seclusion of the character arguably the most devastated by the loss. Unsurprisingly in such a small community, people exchange opinions about both incidents with sympathy and admiration, blame and disdain. Particularly well conveyed throughout is the men’s taciturn discomfort with grief, fear, and loss of control. Despite the characters’ ambivalence about the gifts and punishments the town offers its residents, the novel ends on a note of hope—if not of transformation, then at least of a change for the better. The two other queer characters, older women long married to men, are portrayed in rather affectionate terms. They’re both strong personalities whose devotion to each other is apparent to anyone who pays attention. Their relationship is one of the two highlighted love stories in the novel, both of which are tragic. For Bev and Trudy, their rare time alone together must be care fully planned, because neither is willing to upset her stable life either by living as an out lesbian couple or by pulling up roots and moving away. Even so, after selecting a Dolly Parton song on the jukebox at the local bar, “Bev leads Trudy in a practiced two-step, both of them laughing, breathless. ... Everyone else goes back to drinking, or shooting pool, or staring at the TV. But Alice watches the couple in the middle of the room. Two bodies in complete sync, moving through the neon glow. ... Sway, and step, and sway. Love, and love, and love.” Throughout the novel, the prose coaxes the reader to slow down to the pace of the town, to imagine the isolation of its in habitants, a population bereft of dreams or ambitions. Impres sive for its careful, comprehensive portrait of memory, love, grief, and community, The Road to Dalton encourages accept ance of its flawed characters. They are doing the best they know how in a place where the only expectations are of birth and mar riage and death. ________________________________________________________________ Martha K. Davis is the author of the novel Scissors, Paper, Stone.

Those Little Town Woes

M ARTHA K. D AVIS

THE ROAD TO DALTON by Shannon Bowring EuropaEdi ti ons. 250 pages, $18. D ALTON is a fictional small town in northern Maine, but it’s clear that Shannon Bowring knows the territory first hand. The place itself might be considered a character, perhaps the main character, because of how it shapes and re stricts the people who live there. Half the town works at the lum ber mill, the one industry that keeps the area going. Except for the mill owner’s family, everyone barely gets by with their job at the mill or as a waitress, a cop, a librarian, or a farmer. Peo ple occasionally pay for services with odd jobs or food they’ve grown or fished. The town is remote and insular—one of those places where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Set in 1990, each chapter is narrated by a different character, and gradually it becomes clear that this device is creating a kind of community within the larger town, with no one person at the center of the story. As with her rich descriptions of the landscape and the weather, Bowring weaves in period details like corded

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