CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
April 2006, Vol. 48, No. 4
Jack's marriage had "gone south" fifteen years ago. He and his wife had divorced after the death of their infant daughter. Jack left his upstate New York home with his dog and made his way around the country, south and west, and then southeast. Along the way, he worked any kind of law enforcement or security job he could find. Jack is a natural born protector of the vulnerable. He has been a military policeman, a deputy sheriff, a college campus cop, a director of security at a mall, even a guard in a psychiatric clinic. By the time we meet him, Jack has sunk to the level of plainclothes security officer and bouncer at a resort hotel on the Carolina coast. His job is to keep "the guests safe from each other" and from those who would prey on them.It is an incident at the resort hotel's bar that sends Jack back "north" again. He rescues a pretty New York City lawyer from an embarrassing, and potentially dangerous, encounter with a gigolo who is high on drugs. Impressed by Jack's ability to handle himself and sensing a mutual attraction, the lawyer, Merle Davidoff, invites Jack to visit her in New York. She has a job, a little detective work, that she thinks may interest him.
With little to lose and with an interest in seeing Merle Davidoff again, Jack heads north to hear her proposal. She has a nephew, Tyler Pearl, who has disappeared. Tyler is 23-years old and the son of Merle's dead sister. His stepfather is a successful businessman who had little time for Tyler once his wife died. Tyler has lived on his own for years. He has happily accepted money from his aunt and he has developed a serious gambling habit. Tyler has recently dropped out of sight somewhere in upstate New York. In Merle's view, Tyler is harmless and probably helpless, but she is worried because he has always had a knack for getting into trouble. She suspects that he has piled up big gambling debts and that some really bad people may be after him. Merle needs someone tough and experienced to find Tyler. Jack seems to fill the bill. Merle tells Jack that Tyler's last known location is someplace upstate, a small town called Vienna. Merle has no idea where it is. Jack does. Vienna is only a few miles from where he and his wife lived, a place Jack associates with failure and tragedy. Jack's trip north is more than merely a search for Tyler Pearl. It is a return to the unfinished business of Jack's past.
Women are intrigued by Jack. Likewise, Jack has a weakness for women, especially strong women. When he walks Merle Davidoff to safety after the resort incident, he takes pleasure in holding her firm upper arm. Merle is not the only strong woman in Jack's northern adventure. His return to rural New York brings him into contact with an old flame, a strong woman who is holding her family together as her husband withers away with terminal cancer. Jack's inquiries about Tyler Pearl draw the attention of Georgia Bromwell, a wealthy, wild and athletic woman journalist. Georgia claims she wants to do a story on Jack. Jack knows that she wants more than a story from him.
Jack is tough, tough enough take on society's bad guys, tough enough to mercy-kill his beloved dog. He is tough enough to keep to himself an awful secret about his marriage. But toughness is not enough to prevent Jack from being haunted by the death of his infant child. Jack is tormented by the suicide of his ex-wife and his failure to locate the body of a kidnapped child named Janice Tannner. In the winter cold, so many years ago, in this upstate town, he searched for that girl's body as her mother looked on. He tested the snow, again and again, with the long handle of a shovel, feeling blindly for that soft bump that would at least bring the mother some closure on her family tragedy. Jack's toughness will help him solve the mystery of Tyler Pearl's disappearance. However, it takes more than toughness for Jack to come to terms with his past. When we last see Jack, he is heading even further north, we hope to a new and happier life.
Frederick Busch helps us get to know a deceptively complex tough-guy hero by creatively weaving his hero's tragic past into his present challenge. He shows us that, sometimes, toughness, like beauty, is only skin-deep. Enjoy North or any one of Frederick Busch's 21 other novels. Sadly, Frederick Busch passed away in February. He had planned to be at our 2006 CLA Annual Conference to share his insights on writing and to answer our questions. We will miss him, but we can still read the stories he left for us to enjoy.
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