Wright stuff ends with a bang

By Barbara Rich Daily Progress correspondent
Published: September 14, 2008

Serendipity is a lovely, multi-syllable word.  I bring it up because a couple of days before rumors about the arrival of Gustav began to surface, I was handed a book about the aftermath of Katrina.  Jason F. Wright’s “Recovering Charles” takes place in New Orleans, when too many of the missing remained unaccounted for, and a son is summoned to the scene of disaster to help find his long-estranged father.

Luke Milward had a happy childhood in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, — the only child of parents who were in love with each other, and who loved him.  All this changed when his mother took an overdose of prescribed sleeping pills, and his father, Charles, changed from an architect with a love for, and a talent on, the sax, into a wandering alcoholic.

We learn all this in flashbacks; now it’s the summer of 2005, and Luke is a successful photographer.  He lives in New York, and has a girl friend who is free with her “I love yous,” to which he can only respond — out of honesty, reluctance or whatever; “I know.” Or “Thank you,” or his seemingly all-purpose word:  “Understood.”

Still, life is good, until an unknown man, Jerome, changes it with a phone call.

“Your Daddy is missin’, Luke.  Been livin’ here in New Awlins for ‘bout a year.  … Get on down here and find ’im.”

Luke’s response:  “I can’t just pause my life and go on a wild goose chase.”

But, of course he goes — the book’s title tells us that.  And he meets a wonderful bunch of locals; discovers much about his father and, incidentally, himself.  Luke undergoes what one would call a profound transformation, which put my own into perspective.

To tell the truth, I started out not liking “Recovering” a whole lot.  Hemingway was a master at cutting sentences down to their essence.  He made of them short, carefully crafted ones:  odes to the power of abbreviated eloquence.  I found Wright’s use of the four or five word, deliberately terse, short-cut sentences wearing, and not particularly telling.  Page after page, with lots of white space, broken by brief lines of dialogue.

Also, I wasn’t enamored by all the identifiable product names that were identified on Luke’s long road trip down to the Big Easy.  Slim Jim and Red Bull.  Pop Tarts and McDonald’s and Cracker Barrel.  He stays at a Holiday Inn and reads USA Today.  At times, it all began to seem like one long commercial.

But once he reaches New Orleans, the rhythm of the author’s words got to me.  The story got to me.  The people did too — bewitching Bela and Jez, Charles’ fiancee got to me, and the way a son learns how, in just six months, his father had stopped drinking and began to make music, captivating patrons in the restaurant where he worked with his soaring notes and equally soaring riffs.  Charles became the musician he was meant to be.

“Recovering” slowed down to character development of people who live comfortably on the page, and this is what makes a novel.  It made this novel one I felt involved in — wanting to know what had happened to Charles, and worrying about him.  Wondering whether he would be found, and in what condition. 

I also started being interested in Luke in a way I had not been before, either in Manhattan or in his leisurely, three-day trip down to New Orleans.  What else would we discover about him?  We knew his parents met cute in high school.  We knew why his mother went on the pills, and why his dad couldn’t “deal” with her death anymore than his mother could deal with the death of her own mom.  But what made Luke the way he was, aside from these facts?

When a reader becomes interested in the core story, reader and book come alive.  You begin to appreciate lines like. “ ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s what you say when you hear someone is dying.” It can even make you forgive expository stuff like “(a)nd the back of my shirt was glued to my back like Saran Wrap on the top of Mom’s three-bean casserole.”

Ewwww …

If someone had told me that my eyes would be moist when I came to the final pages of this book — if anyone had told me this while I was getting into the first part — I’d have expressed strong doubts.  Which is fine. The power of serendipity come full circle — the surprising recovery of Charles and, not less significantly, that of Luke.

It should be noted that an advance reader’s edition was reviewed, with warnings not to quote from it.  After speaking with the book’s publicist, permission was granted to do so before the publication date of Sept. 16.

Jason F. Wright grew up in Charlottesville, and he and his family live in Virginia.  This is his third novel. The first two were received well, as “feel good” books; one made it to the New York Times bestseller list.  “Recovering Charles” also is an emotion-pleaser, and its main strength lies in the fact that it gets better as it goes along, saving the best for last.