Fire Point

A few years ago I sat next to John Smolens at a table in the "authors tent" at the annual Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise, Michigan, near the top of the eastern U.P. It seemed an unlikely locale for the world-wide release of his latest novel, "Fire Point". But then, perhaps it wasn't after all. Smolens is an English professor at Northern Michigan University, and the setting for his new book is, once again, the U.P. The town, Whitefish Harbor, is fictional. As he did in his previous novel, "Cold", Smolens tantalizes readers like me who read with an atlas close at hand with town names that are "almost" real, employing parts of real place names, but putting them in slightly the wrong place. All you know for sure is that the story takes place somewhere near Marquette, on the shores of Lake Superior. Whitefish Harbor, like the real villages of Paradise, Trout Lake or Grand Marais, is instantly recognizable as one of those small, isolated often soul-deadening communities surrounded by sand, swamps and second-growth scrub pine forests, which survives mostly on the tourist trade during the brief months of summer. This insular small-town setting is key to the novel's events (which take place over a six-month period from April to September), as they delicately and inevitably unfold in the inimitable prose style Smolens has established and perfected in his earlier work. Employment opportunities are few and severely limited. A key character is introduced in the following manner: "Places like Whitefish Harbor send kids like Sean Colby out into the world after high school. They go to college, they enlist in the service." Sean Colby could easily be listed as the villain of "Fire Point", but that would be oversimplifying an extremely intricate feat of story-telling, because as the plot evolves, you learn a bit about his childhood and are privy to a not very pretty picture of his parents' marriage and their own particular disappointments and failings. You quickly come to the conclusion that there are no clear-cut good guys or bad guys in this tale, only regular people with all the usual complexities who are trying to find their place in a life they didn't necessarily choose. Hannah LeClaire, a mature 19 year-old, is the girl all the boys and men in town follow longingly with their eyes, but she had given herself, too soon, to Sean Colby the previous year. A fatherless loner herself, Hannah was drawn to Sean's "leader of the pack" aura. But something was "twisted" in Sean, and when Hannah became pregnant, he gave in to the "solution" proposed by his parents, then disappeared into the army. Ten months later, discharged early for not yet clear reasons, Sean shows up back in Whitefish Harbor and begins stalking Hannah and her new boyfriend, 29 year-old Martin Reed, a Chicago man who had spent his childhood summers in the village, his mother's hometown. Early on in the narrative, Reed would appear to be the obvious hero of the pie

Another winner from John Smolens. A real thiller that brings out the best in mankind, love and brutality. A story based in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A young man returns home after being discharged from the military early, to find his ex-girlfriend has taken up with an olderman who really is an outcast from the Chicago area. The young man finds that he can't handle that she is in love with someone else, and starts in motion a series of violent acts. Mr. Smolens spells out the story in cisp writing style, and with his detail descriptive this story becomes an outstanding thriller. After reading three of Mr. Smolen's books, I feel that he is one of America's most outstanding writers, and one that should have enjoyed much more commerical success.