Soapy first novel about life, love, passion, and perversion in a
decaying mill-town in upstate New York (Mohawk by name). Two
cousins, Diana Wood and Anne Younger, are each burdened by the
repressiveness of life with their aging, neurotic, and manipulative
mothers, and they're also unhappy in love. On double dates way back
in high school, things should have miraculously sorted themselves
out, but didn't: the beautiful Anne really loves Dan (and vice
versa), but Dan marries the good, plain cousin Diana instead (whom
he only sort of loves); and the terribly intelligent but
doomed-to-disappointment Anne errs by marrying Dallas, an
irresponsible and at best half-charming town rake, drinker, and
auto mechanic. With these marriages in place, life goes on: Anne
and Dallas (after having a son) get divorced; Dan becomes a
wheelchair victim and muddles on with Diana (along with her
hypochondriacal, money-draining mother); only much later, at book's
end, does Diana herself sadly but conveniently die, with the result
that Anne and Dan can at last move beyond furtive consummations in
front of the late-night fireplace and move away together to
Phoenix, Arizona. Before such bittersweet bliss, though, much else
happens, and deep, dark secrets emerge, most having to do with a
Snopes-like family by name of Grouse. The town's speechless retard,
nicknamed Wild Bill (who once upon a time loved Anne from afar and
stood mooning under her window), turns out to have been
fist-clobbered into retardation by his sleazy father, Rory Grouse,
co-worker in the leather mills with Anne's father. There's
character-blackmail afoot, it turns out, having to do with the
years-long theft of company leather skins by Grouse, and with
Anne's father's principled refusal to take part. Anne's
draft-dodging and hippy son, in the later Vietnam years, will
half-inadvertently reveal the whole mystery - along with a welter
of bullets, two dead Grouse brothers (one the emotionally crippled
town cop), the dead (and still speechless) Wild Bill, and the
frosting-on-the-cake info that Rory Grouse has helped himself to
his own granddaughter's sexual favors for quite a while.
Workmanlike writing for lovers of the well-atmosphered small-town
saga with not a cliche unturned. For those idle hours between
daytime soaps. (Kirkus Reviews)
Mohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his schoolwork - because in a place like Mohawk it doesn't pay to be smart.
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