A Persistent Echo
As this haunting and suspenseful novel opens, August Simms arrives, seemingly as a stranger, in the town of Rhome, Texas. We follow the mystery of his arrival and his intentions over the course of one month in the spring of 1897. He finds his way to the Murphy boarding house on the edge of town. Layer by layer, readers learn the alleged purpose of his trip.
In newspapers, Simms has read of sightings of airships in the area and seeks the truth of these peculiar stories. He enlists the aid of a local man to drive him in a buggy from one witness to another so he can interview them to determine the veracity of their stories. Slowly, Kaufman reveals Simms’s complicated history with Rhome, with boarding house owner Nadine Murphy, with Black residents of the town, and with a past episode of injustice. When threats to Nadine and others come to Simms’s attention, he defies his eighty-six years and his advanced cancer, and vows to protect his friends. He will try to deter a mob through persuasion, but, if necessary, he stands ready to use violence.
Kaufman writes beautifully, with spare prose, well-paced surprises, period-appropriate language, and a sense of foreboding. He sets the story in historical context, with references to the Civil War and to the looming wars in Cuba and the Philippines. Dialogue about the role of progress, the meaning of free will, and ambiguous lessons from scriptures do not slow down the plot. Even though readers can anticipate Simms’s likely fate, they will not anticipate the twists along the way.
