Touch
On the eve of World War II, an Anglican priest returns, following a twenty year absence, to his birthplace in Sawgamet, a northwoods Canadian gold and lumber boomtown gone bust. Stephen is there to see his mother out of her life, settle in with his own wife and three daughters, and take over pastor duties from his stepfather, but much more is in store for him. Memories careen him back to his own childhood. There his father’s and grandfather’s stories await, all of them haunted by terror and wonder.
Sawgamet is a place where “the woods are deeper than can be imagined,” and the human population lives with winters that break the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, freeze wanderers, and bury the town. Jeannot, the town’s founder, catches a fish with a belly full of gold. He and his young wife give chase to a visionary golden caribou. When he returns after a long desertion, one of his womenfolk gives him a slap “like kindling broken over the knee.” Monsters and witches entice, and the dead return, sometimes to bless and other times for terrible vengeance.
With a lean, steely style, first novelist Zenter presents his haunting tale via a listening priest who is wise enough to have faith in stories as well as his God. The near-combustible love of his grandparents might put readers in mind of the magical realism of Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate), but here, much further north of Mexico, ice dominates. The lives of men and animals are more strongly characterized than their often perplexing and smarter womenfolk, but all take a second place to supernatural forces in the haunted and haunting climate of this sinister and wondrous debut.
