searching for lost relatives and roots in a popular novel
WALTZING COWBOYS by Sarah Collins Honenberger. Cedar Creek Publishing, Bremo Bluff, VA; www.cedarcreekauthors.com; www.readhonenberger.com. 2008. 245 pages. $15.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-9790205-6-8.
Honenberger writes about individuals between the poles of leaving the pains and mysteries of the past and coming to what they visualize will be a remedial, fortifying future. As in most lives, this involves relationships at either end. Older Rhue Hogan means to leave behind memories of his best friend who died in meeting with his son he never saw upon abandoning his pregnant wife. The 40-year-old son Ford travels to New England to uncover his Puritan roots with a young woman he barely knows. Father and son are filled with neither ennui nor hope. They move on their journeys mainly intuitively, too honest despite holding their disappointments and qualms at a distance to believe they will find completeness or an answer to their unease even if they reach their ends.
The author has a near-perfect pitch for popular fiction. The characters are just different, just marginal enough to be interesting; yet at the same time, just familiar enough for readers to relate to. Dialogue is crisp and informative, occasionally catchy. Narrative is skillfully woven with frequent touches of poetry. The characters, their situations, their emotions, and their behavior are all basically rooted in the world as experienced by ordinary persons.
The popular novel goes down as easily as watching a TV movie. In fact, "Waltzing Cowboys" is such that maybe one day one will see it as a movie.
(Note: The author is an active member of gather.)
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