Bright Forever, The: A Novel [Paperback]

Katie set out on her bicycle early one evening to return to some late library books; but when she fails to come back, her family is left frantic with worry, and the world, as they know it changes overnight. Who could have kidnapped little Katie, and is she even still alive? One thing for sure is that Katie never made it to the Library. Junior, her father, and her brother Gilley, found her bicycle leaning against a parking meter in front of the local J.C. Penny store.

Suspicion turns to two people: Henry Dees, a shy, reclusive mathematics teacher, who harbors secret desires for the little girl; and Raymond R. Wright, a middle-aged, drug addled, and itinerant construction worker, who resents Junior for sacking him from his job at the local glass factory.

Thirty years later, some of those involved in Katie's disappearance come forward with what they know, each detailing the events that lead up to the kidnapping. Told from multiple points of view, Martin weaves together a startlingly suspenseful, and guilt-ridden confessional involving the little girl with a slipped bicycle chain and three library books; a dope fiend and his green truck with black circles in the doors; and a math tutor, a thief, a voyeur, a man who kissed a little girl on a porch swing one summer afternoon.

The principle narrator is Henry, and as the novel begins a sort of determined fascination surrounds Henry's obsession. Lately he had been living closer to the edge, taking to spying on the Mackie's and even entering their home on Sunday mornings when they are at church. Henry handles the things they have touched, taking a single rose petal, and a fluff of Katie's hair.

Henry doesn't know what to do with his passion, and the love that he feels for Katie, this child he wished were his own "is like a knot he just can't untangle." Ray, on the other hand, has spent his life being labeled as an idiot and a fool. Now LSD "jacks his head like he was a lamp with a short wire, - bright and burning."

Ray, a wrong-minded man now "carried a misery in his soul and was hurtful in his heart." He swings into town and sweeps Clare, Henry's plain-looking, middle-aged neighbor, off her feet and sweet-talks her into helping him realize his dream to settle down with "a wife and a home and friends to fill it."

Clare, thinking she's found love later in life, is the first to admit to Ray that know one as ever been as good to her as he has. But she's haunted by the life she had with her previous husband. She had come out of her old life into a new one, and even if she wished for it she couldn't 't go back even though she may have fiercely misjudged her new man.

Like a small town puzzle, the pieces begin to come together. Henry and Clare fall under Raymond's spell, lending him money and excusing his violent behavior without asking too many questions. Ray and Henry form a strange friendship based on their obsession with the little girl. They are both less satisfied with the way their lives have turned out and never speak of the yearning or being lonely, or of the wrong turns they'd taken over the years and the hard places they've come to.

The Bright Forever is tightly paced with Martin's gorgeously measured prose adding to a climax that hinges on the dark secret that is kept undisclosed for thirty years. Period detail is carefully rendered, with reminiscent references to songs, products and slang from the early '70s woven effortlessly into the storyline.

The ending is heartbreaking, appropriate to the kind of turmoil unleashed in this story, with Martin effectively spinning a seductive tale that is touching and also overwhelmingly disquieting. The characters are multi-facetted and anguished, but gain much of our sympathy in their struggles. Martin has created a nuanced, fully realized world, a portrait of the loneliness, desolation and the secrets of life in a small Midwestern Town that will never be the same. Mike Leonard June 05.