Tom Bailey The Grace That Keeps This World

The Grace That Keeps This World

Tom Bailey

Shay Areheart (Crown), Oct 2005, $24.00

ISBN: 0307238016

Adirondacks forester Gary Hazen believes he lives the good life with his beloved wife Susan, and their two sons twenty-four year-old Gary David and nineteen year-old Kevin because he loves the outdoors. He firmly believes his family feels the same way.

On a hunting trip in the mountain wilderness near their Upstate New York home, Gary begins to wonder if perhaps his younger son does not like the life of a woodsman. Whereas Gary David seems the heir apparent to him, college student Kevin wants to be a teacher and refuses to join them on the hunt as he promised his girlfriend he would not. Meanwhile new environmental conservation officer, Josephine Roy has warned Gary and others that she will enforce all the state hunting rules that guys like him have ignored over the years. Josephine and Gary David have a relationship, but Gary's son fears telling his dad that he is sleeping with the enemy. The potential family schism comes to a tragic head on the first day of the new hunting season.

Turning Kahil Gibran's message of parents letting their children go on its head, Tom Bailey provides an interesting family drama that is somewhat difficult to follow due to an abundance of narrators (a baker's dozen at least). The character driven story line focuses mostly on the inner tensions between the Hazens, but has sidebars narrated by others that seem out of place. Tom Bailey puts the Adirondacks setting to strong use in order to display the differences between the generations and when it concentrates on the Hazens it make for a fine tale of personal conflict.

Harriet Klausner