townesvanfaulkner

Top 100 Ranking: 85

Writing Style-7.8
Originality-8.1
Plot-8.4
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.8
Overall-8.4

This book was a very pleasant surprise. I bought it because it had a cool picture on the cover and it was only a buck-fitty at McKay’s. I hadn’t heard anything about it. Amazon doesn’t have a picture of it on their website, so it may actually be out of print now.

It’s about the Texas/Mexico border country (fitting that I was reading it in conjunction with No Country for Old Men) and illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. The main character is an ultra rich, as in tens of millions of dollars are nothing to this guy, Catholic who’s wife and only son are killed in a car wreck. He drives south and randomly ends up in a Texas town near the border and is strongly affected by seeing what a desperate state immigrants are in as they attempt to illegal cross the border. He spends lots of money to set up a safe haven and provides food, health care, and shelter for them.

At first, I thought that this book was simply a journalist/non-fiction writer who is familiar with the region and its problems and so he (the author) just wanted to write a novel about it based on his research, and that there would be just barely enough plot to justify the writing of it. And then I got a little further and it seemed like maybe he was a guy with strong white, liberal guilt having a fantasy about what he would do to help these people if only he were the heir to hundreds of millions of dollars. It held my attention but still not necessarily anything to write home about.

However, in the second half of the novel it really takes off. The main character, Adrian Northwood, is a painter and he is painting a series of pictures of the immigrants and a series of religious images. One of the immigrants staying at the shelter steals his paintings one day and crosses back into Mexico. This prompts Northwood to set off after him to retrieve his paintings. His spiritual journey through Mexico, complete with a run-in with the corrupt Mexican police and an extended stay in their horrific penile system, is very Cormac McCarthian.

The cover of the book says that this is the story of a modern day St. Francis if that means anything to you. I didn’t really know anything about the life of St. Francis before I read this book, but he seems pretty cool.

At any rate, I loved it. It’s got a great message and I think it probably paints a pretty good picture of the region. The author writes in the foreward that none of the characters are based on reality but that it is a realistic portrait of south Texas, Mexico, and the people migrating into the country (interestingly, he states that he was too kind to the Mexican police, which is hard to believe because he makes them seem pretty darn horrible).