The land

Thomas James Maltman, 1971-

Book - 2020

"Recovering from a terrible auto accident just before the turn of the millennium, college dropout and hobbyist computer-game programmer Lucien Swenson becomes the caretaker of a house in northern Minnesota. Lucien sets out to find a missing woman he had been having an affair with, who vanished along with money stolen from the bank where they had worked together. His search will take him to Rose of Sharon, a white supremacist church deep in the wilderness, where a cabal of outcasts wait for the end of the world at a place they call The Land. Lucien is visited at the house by wolves and a mysterious guest, who may not be who she claims, as well as a vast flock of violent ravens out of an apocalyptic vision. At once a mystery and spiritua...l noir, The Land explores the dark side of belief, the uniquely American obsession with end times and racial identity, and the sacrifices we make for those we love."--

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Subjects
Genres
Psychological fiction
Published
New York, NY : Soho [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Thomas James Maltman, 1971- (author)
Physical Description
324 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781641292207
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

When beautiful Maura goes missing, 21-year-old Lucien, with whom she has been having an affair, goes in search of her. His quest leads him to the Rose of Sharon, a white-supremacist church where Maura's husband, Eli, is the assistant pastor. Keeping his identity secret, Lucien--hoping to discover Maura's whereabouts--ingratiates himself with the leaders of the church, including Mother Sophie, its blind founder who miraculously cures him of his migraines. It's the winter of 1999, and Y2K looms, promising--so the Rose of Sharon's white-supremacist congregation believes--the apocalypse. In the meantime, Lucien, a computer nerd, is developing a computer game called The Land, which coincidentally (not!) is the name of the supremacist camp. What are the hate-filled Rose of Sharon leaders planning? Maltman's very dark novel deals dramatically with considerations of good and evil, of angels and demons, creating a visceral sense of danger, for Lucien's life will be at risk if his identity and his relationship with Maura are discovered. Metaphysics and mystery merge in this haunting, thought-provoking story.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Maltman's middling latest (after The Night Birds) centers on a man's search for his missing lover in the winter of 1999 among religious zealots in the Minnesota hinterlands. With Y2K looming, Lucien Swenson takes a job house-sitting at an isolated homestead, ostensibly to recover from a car accident that thwarted his plans to finish college and embark on a career as a game programmer. But the set-up is a cover for Lucien's investigation into what happened to Maura, his lover he last saw in the summer. Maura was the young wife of a preacher at the Rose of Sharon fundamentalist church, and she lived among other faithful congregants in a cultlike encampment called the Land. After Lucien moves near the church, he adopts an assumed name and integrates into its community of violent, racist believers led by blind matriarch Mother Sophie. As Lucien searches for Maura, he becomes complicit in the church's preparations for a Y2K apocalypse and the subsequent race war the cult believes is coming. Unfortunately, heavy-handed symbolism and convoluted plotting mar the intriguing set-up, and Lucien's search for Maura ends up being little more than a MacGuffin. While Lucien is an enjoyably slippery narrator, the work as a whole feels undercooked. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

A nurse at Evelina London Children's Hospital, Glass follows up Dylan Thomas Prize long-listee Peach with Rest and Be Thankful, a timely if sometimes eerie tale of a pediatric nurse suffering burnout as her life shifts uncertainly and a mysterious figure dances at the edge of her vision (30,000-copy first printing). Surfacing every six or seven years with titles that earn superlatives, the Alex Award-winning Maltman (Night Birds) here offers The Land, a literary-noir crossover featuring dropout/programmer/caretaker Lucien Swenson, recovering from a car accident in the last months of the 20th century. His search for a former lover leads him to a white supremacist church and strange encounters with wolves, angry ravens, and a shadowy woman. In Tell Me How To Be, Patel's follow-up to the NPR best-booked If You See Me, Don't Say Hi, Los Angeles-based songwriter Akash leaves Los Angeles (and the boyfriend he keeps secret from his family) and returns home to Illinois when his widowed mother sells the family home. He plans to pack his things, mourn his father, and mend family ties, but he didn't anticipate meeting his first romantic interest and falling in love again. (35,000-copy first printing). The heroine of Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley's Perestroika in Paris is a high-spirited filly who wanders from her stall at the racetrack and makes her way to the heart of glorious Paris, befriending a venturesome German Shepherd, a gaggle of ornery birds, and a boy named Etienne who lives in the ivy-clad seclusion of his great-grandmother's home. But how long can a horse named Paras (short for Perestroika) remain at liberty in the big city? By Spanish author Vilas, the No. 1 internationally best-selling autobiographical novel Ordesa features a schoolteacher who has returned to his hometown in the Pyrenees to reassess his life. Retired, divorced, and mourning his deceased parents, he looks honestly at loss and the meaning of life now defined mostly by memory.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A troubled young man in search of his lost love finds himself involved with White supremacists in this novel set in the uncertain days leading up to Y2K. Lucien, the unappealing hero, has been withdrawn ever since recovering from a car accident, spending his days pretending to still be a college student. An offer to act as a winter caretaker for a house whose owners have left for warmer climes becomes an opportunity to investigate a nearby Christian Identity church whose pastor is the husband of Maura, the woman he loved. Lucien met her when the two of them worked at a bank, and he has not seen her since she disappeared at the same time the bank found $5,000 missing. If that weren't premise enough, the novel features mystic-religious visions that seem more inspired by the covers of Christian metal LPs than anything else. In addition, there's the mysterious long-lost daughter of the couple Lucien is caretaking for and a collection of books containing art looted by the Nazis, none of these anything but distractions from the main plot. At times, the book seems to be about how easy it is to be seduced into racism, but Lucien's flirtations feel too naïve to be believable or for the reader to have a stake in his going astray. A speech toward the end rebuking the White supremacists for perverting Christ's true message is the final mawkish touch. There's nothing solid in the foundation of this book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter 1 A Dead Man Casts His Shadow Above all, Mr. Kroll told me, take care of the dog. We were standing together in the foyer, next to the last suitcases Mr. Kroll needed to lug to his Audi, and he lingered here as if he had something else important to tell me. Mrs. Kroll already had the Audi running in the driveway, where it huffed clouds of exhaust in the icy November air as she sat rigid, her arms crossed and her body tilted forward in the seatbelt of the passenger side, the posture of a snowbird who might grow wings and fly to South Padre Island for the winter by herself if he didn't hurry. When she gave a toot on the horn, Mr. Kroll grimaced. "Just between you and me, Lucien, I don't put much stock in this Y2K business," he said, "but if the world really does go to hell, I don't want to be stuck someplace cold." I didn't say anything, but I couldn't have disagreed more. If the world ended at the turn of the millennium, the last place I wanted to be was surrounded by busloads of old folks greased up in Coppertone and singing along to Jimmy Buffett. I couldn't wait to be alone, longed for what I hoped would be a winter of solitude. Mr. Kroll handed me a schedule with his tight, military printing listing watering days for the ferns and spider plants, the exact temperature to set the thermostat (62 degrees), and a food and exercise program for a geriatric German shepherd named Kaiser. "No parties," he said, taking hold of my other hand. "I don't drink." "You will clear the driveway of snow, just in case." He didn't explain what he meant. His palm felt scaly and lizard-like. He tugged me closer to him as though he were about to confide a secret. "Harry said you were good. He said he was sorry he had to let you go." If it wasn't for Harry Larkin, I'd be homeless as well as jobless. The Krolls were longtime customers at Bay City Mutual where I had worked before the accident. The place they were leaving behind was called "The Gingerbread House" by locals--a stone house set back in the pines with a red-tiled roof that curved like an elf's shoe, twin turrets on either side, and topiary bearding the lower windows--like some vision from the Brothers Grimm. The property sprawled over eighty acres of boreal forest above a deep canyon carved by the Wind River, which ran swift and silver far below, spilling down to Cauldron Falls before pouring into Aurora Bay, miles and miles away, where I attended Northern Minnesota State University. The Krolls needed someone to maintain the property and I needed a place to stay. Get some rest , Harry Larkin had advised me before explaining the arrangement, then get your shit together . I told friends and family that I planned to use the time to finish coding an open-ended computer game called The Land , a post-apocalyptic fantasy world I'd been programming since my freshman year with the little free time I had between work and school. I planned to release the game as shareware and dreamed of it becoming a cult classic. Already on academic probation, I was about to be thrown out of college, so I hoped the game might get me in the door at some place like BioWare up in Canada, where I could work on the next Baldur's Gate . Mr. Kroll had a thin crop of oily hair, nicotine-stained teeth, his breath smelling of ashes and Listerine. "Do you know your way around guns?" He asked this in the same tone as someone might say, Do you know the Lord? "Guns?" I was the only child of two overly protective parents who hadn't even let me own a toy gun as a boy. "I keep a .30-06 fully loaded in the gun cabinet. You have the keys. We've discussed the things that are not yours to touch, but the rifle you may use when the situation calls for it. If wolves come around--and they will--let them have it." "You want me to give them the gun, sir?" Mr. Kroll had finally let go of my hand. "Lucien," he said, his mouth crimping at the corners, as though speaking my name aloud a second time pained him. I regretted my attempt at humor, just a little, knowing how much these old-timers hated a wiseass. When Mr. Kroll had visited the bank on business he preferred to be waited on by the pretty, young female tellers, especially Maura. Maura had been everyone's favorite. "Harry said you were smart before your time in the hospital, so I think you know what I mean." How much had Harry told him? And surely he knew that wolves were on the endangered species list. Mr. Kroll lowered his voice, though it was just the two of us in the foyer. "Wolves are vermin and you are on private property. Won't anyone know what you do out here. Got it? Also, it's okay if some of my wife's plants die, but not the dog." After they left, I spent hours wandering the maze of rooms, at first careful of the old couple's privacy. My bare feet sank into lush, Berber carpets the color of burgundy, and the floors seemed to slope downhill as if this entire house was drifting toward the volcanic ridge above the river, a quarter mile away. A spiral staircase led to a walkout on the lower level. Here a bearskin rug splayed before a towering stone fireplace. Bay windows looked out over a grove of birches already filling up with snow. In November of 1999, a wolfish cold had settled early over the woods, shaggy with snow. It was so quiet I swore I could hear the hush of each flake touching the ground. I could hear the thump of my heart in my ears, strong and insistent and traitorous. I only wanted to be alone, but I could feel something padding toward me in the snow, and I knew I would have to go out to meet it. I didn't know enough to be afraid yet. My mother had cam paigned for me to come home to Chicago and enroll in Oakton Community College for the spring semester instead of housesitting this place over the winter. "You'll be so far from everything," she said over the phone. "That's the whole point." "But how will you keep up with your classes?" "It's not a bad commute. Now that I'm not working thirty hours a week, I can focus better." I paused, mentally counting how many lies I'd packed in those sentences. My focus had been shattered. I missed two weeks of classes in the hospital and I should have withdrawn rather than take Fs, but I let the deadline pass without doing anything. Yet, I still attended. Some days I went to classes I hadn't even enrolled in, choosing random lectures on meteorology, the philosophy of Eastern religions, or astronomy, and sitting in the back taking notes. Once the registrar's office caught up with me, my time at Northern was done, but I couldn't wrap my head around why any of it was supposed to matter anymore. "You are coming home for Thanksgiving." Home? I wasn't sure where that was anymore since my parents had divorced. "We'll see, Mom." I heard her swallow on the other end of the phone line. I hated talking on the phone, the way disembodied voices floated out of the ether. She knew I wasn't coming home. I couldn't. Not yet. There was something I had to do first. I was afraid she was going to start crying again. "I gotta go, Mom." The first day of the storm I took Kaiser out for a walk, trussing my hiking boots in antique snowshoes I'd found hanging beside the French doors in the lower level and grabbing a set of poles from an umbrella stand. I didn't bother with a leash, knowing the old dog would stay close. In the sandy, acidic soil of the property, the white pines grew immense, their trunks gnarled and gigantic, the upper reaches soughing in the wind. Grandfather trees with white frock coats and mossy, dripping beards. Kaiser ambled along beside me. Released from his side yard pen, the dog appeared ready to bound through the snow, if only his body would allow it. He wheezed and struggled in the deeper drifts, his back legs stiff and arthritic. Balanced on my balsa wood poles, I commiserated. Under my skin I could sense the alien piece of ceramic prosthetic the surgeon had grafted to my hip bone. Kaiser and I discovered a pond at the edge of the birch grove. Beneath the glazed surface of the ice, koi swam in sluggish circles, mottled blurs of flame. I cracked the ice with the hard plastic end of my pole and the koi squirmed away. Kaiser snorted beside me, a questioning bark, before using his paws to break more ice so he could slurp the cold water. Soon the small pond would freeze solid around those fish, leaving them trapped and breathless. Already a new skin of ice was forming around the holes we had made. The Krolls hadn't left any instructions about tending the koi and I felt certain they were going to die but didn't know how to save them. We were gazing down into their icy tomb, our shadows blocking out their light. Yet, it didn't seem like a bad way to go, all things considered. "The parable of this world is like your shadow," I told Kaiser, one of my notes from the religion class that got stuck in my head, though I couldn't recall who said it. Kaiser sat on his haunches, slobbery icicles dangling from his muzzle. "If you stop, your shadow stands still. If you chase it, it distances itself from you." Tomorrow was Sunday. I had a shadow to chase. Excerpted from The Land by Thomas Maltman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.