Barbara Lloyd McMichael

West of Here — Jonathan Evison
Algonquin — 496 pages — $24.95

Algonquin executive editor Chuck Adams’ ringing endorsement of Bainbridge Island novelist Jonathan Evison’s new book has set the literary world abuzz.

 

“West of Here,” according to Adams, “is a sublime reminiscence on the American experience” and he predicts that it will become “a lasting piece of literary Americana.”

 

Unfortunately, the editor was so bedazzled by the book that he forgot to do his job. This sprawling novel has typographical and grammatical errors, straggling story lines and a flitting attention to detail — the kind that is crucial, at least, for regional buy-in. Locals will catch this stuff: Elliot Bay (it should be Elliott), andromonous fish (it should be anadromous) — how could a publisher of Algonquin’s stature let these things slip by?

 

It’s a pity, because Evison’s ambitions for this epic are praiseworthy. He attempts to weave together personalities, cultures and themes over a span of 116 years to demonstrate the unintended long-term consequences of lightly considered choices.

 

The author sets his story in the fictional town of Port Bonita which, according to the maps provided, stands right where real-life Port Angeles is situated on the Olympic Peninsula.

 

Evison also borrows from history some of the characters and events involved in the 1889 Press Expedition, the first white men to bushwhack a route through the interior of the Olympics.

 

While the men in Evison’s fictional expedition slog through the upland snow, the folks down in Port Bonita are trying to make a go of it in the frontier town. The motley population includes a ruthless barkeep who sells hooch to the Indians, an over-the-hill madam, two very different unmarried mothers, a fitful Klallam Indian teen and a perennial failure of a businessman whose latest dream — to build a dam on the Elwha — may make him rich at long last.

 

In a parallel story line, Evison populates 21st-century Port Bonita with descendants of those early pioneers — the general manager at a fish-packing plant, his pothead production manager and a woman who eviscerates fish on the processing line. There’s also a parole officer and his roster of restive parolees, a drug-addled Klallam teen, and a wildlife biologist doing environmental impact studies to support the removal of the Elwha Dam.

 

The Port Bonitans of 1889 were all about new beginnings. A century later, the erstwhile frontier has succumbed to disenchantment. But with humans afoot in the landscape — and perhaps a dash of magical realism in the air — stagnation is not a permanent condition.

 

At his best, Evison creates characters with depth, humor, imagination and a capacity to grow.

But he has birthed an unwieldy cast and his back-and-forth narrative between epochs begins to feel like that old tennis match skit — the reader may well lose track of the bouncing ball (and sometimes the author does, too).

 

Evison’s “West of Here” is bold and well-intentioned, but others (Don Berry and David Guterson come immediately to mind) have produced more assured stories of the Northwest experience.

 

Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.