River of Heaven [Paperback]

Sam Brady, a confirmed bachelor all of his 63 years lives in Mt. Gilead, a small town in southern Illinois, his only real friend his kindly neighbor Arthur, who is still mourning the loss of his dear wife Bess, now six months gone. Both seem to be sharing the misery of men living alone even as Sam comes across as a little old bald- headed man who chooses to be isolated because of his secret that for years he has kept pent up, even in a supposedly enlightened and tolerant world.

Sam is by nature a cautious man; well aware that danger always waits just around the corner and that in a town such as Mt. Gilead he could all too readily be labeled as an abomination, a perversion and someone who participates in sin. But his private, sensible life, and somewhat lonely existence belies the fact that he has no idea what it is to love someone all this time. For years Sam has been content to live alone except for his dogs, the latest being the basset hound Stump a gorgeous animal on patience, steadfast with his devotion, mild tempered and affectionate - the perfect companion for the insular Sam.

Arthur knows without a doubt that his neighbor is a man who has been afraid to get too close to anyone, the only gesture of love is to build a miniature ship, a fancy house for Stump. When the two elderly gentlemen are not keeping each other company at night, they've even spending their time learning to cook as part of a widower's group called the Seasoned Chefs, who every Wednesday evening work up a new and exotic dish led by the bright and confident Vera Moon who once held a flame for Cal, Sam's transient brother.

But just as Tom thinks he's put Cal's troubled past behind him, there appears images of his brother on CNN involved in a standoff on a grain feed and supply elevator. Luckily, thanks to Cal's quick actions, the crisis is averted, but Sam is just thankful that after all these years his brother is still alive. All the years of silence have been "like stones on his heart" - and now ironically he's become a local hero. Later Cal turns up at Sam's house, needing a place to stay outwardly celebrating his heroism, but secretly unable to live with it for reasons that Sam can't fathom.

Cal's arrival, and the recognition that he's been hanging around less than acceptable individuals, does more than throw Sam's life into a tailspin, his presence causing his younger brother to finally confront the memories of that rainy Friday evening in April, back in 1953 when his adolescent friend Dewey Finn died on the Western Union rail tracks. Dewey, the boy with wild red hair and freckles across his nose, with his green eyes and long lashes and a smile that always seemed to put Sam at ease.

Perhaps with Cal now back in his life, Sam will finally have a chance again at family and also a chance to put at rest the mystery of everything he's been carrying with him, regarding Dewey Finn and his mysterious death all those decades ago. Meanwhile, Arthur and his young granddaughter, Maddie continue to orbit around Sam's life, both of them giving him a reason to love again, but it is Cal and his enigmatic past that most stokes the fires of Sam's emotions, his steel blue eyes, still making it look like he's mad as hell, or just scared to half to death.

Significant themes weave throughout this novel, the multifaceted plot line providing a delicate tapestry of human motivations and predicaments, the two brothers who loved each other before they became unraveled and their lives scattered, a confirmed bachelor who is terrified of disappointing his best friend and neighbor, and the kindly granddaughter who sees the goodness when her life gets tough.

Although a bit far-fetched in places its subplots of family secrets and terrorist conspiracies, Lee Martin more than makes up for these deficiencies by writing fully rounded, compassionate characters that we care about and injecting his pages with a giant dose of mid-western reality and sentimentality; even the back-story set in 1959 - where most men then had no idea how far love of this nature can reach - is imbued with a grand sense of legitimacy and possesses an astonishing depth of emotion.

In the end, River of Heaven is about the torment of a broken man who cannot ask for help, where acknowledging the mistakes of the past will not necessarily set him free, certainly not when it has trapped him at the moment. Sam's ultimate legacy is his failure of courage and of failing to love someone enough. It's a sad testament to a man who has gone throughout much of his adult life stagger-blind, feeling in the dark while also trying taking to heart the cruel lessons of love and loss, the events of the novel eventually causing him to find that love comes where he had least expected it to. Mike Leonard June 08.