Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, November 2000: This is the story of what happened to Ellen DeLay in Quillifarkeag, Maine. Quilli (to the locals) has a lot in common with the small towns that Stephen King so often writes about: there are strange characters with strange names (to some of us) who have lived in the area all their lives, as did their parents before them and their grandparents before that--you get the idea. The narrator tells us that his daughter is a killer and he wants to get the whole story down. He takes his time about it, but what we know from the get-go is that Ellen DeLay was gunned down by four female officers of the law who pumped two hundred rounds into her body.
Ellen had been married to Joe for 25 years, but she left him after he accidentally locked her in the part of his truck where he kept his tools--for four days. Ellen thought that Joe was trying to kill her while Joe thought that Ellen had left him. In any case, this incident prompted Ellen to head for the north woods, where, over the years, she learned to dress hunters' kills and became a respected businesswoman. There were a few, especially kids, who thought she was just a crazy woman in the woods but, for the most part, Ellen was left alone.
Over the course of 250 pages, the narrator carefully pieces together the details of what happened one afternoon at St. Antoine du Plupart and, just as importantly, what happened afterwards. Being from Maine, the narrator takes his time. He has other things to do and other stories to tell, but in the end every detail about what is truly an American outrage is told. G.K. Wuori is the author of Nude in Tub and has a wonderful gift for language and a heartfelt affection for the place about which he writes. --Otto Penzler
From Publishers Weekly
Narrated by Splotenbrun "Splotchy" Doll, self-described carpenter, problem-solver and "the father of a killer," Wuori's first novel tells a homespun story of murder, madness and abusive law enforcement set in the eponymous fictional town depicted in Wuori's debut collection of short stories, Nude in Tub. Splotchy's task is to describe the events leading up to the wrongful shooting of a local woman by the police, and the subsequent death of a police officer at the hands of Splotchy's daughter, Wilma. The story, despite its subject, is leisurely paced, woven through with anecdotes about Quilli history, social life and inhabitants. Never devolving into caricature, the provincial scale of the tragedy provides a fresh frame for the topic of police brutality, centering on a rural, not an urban, incident. Wuori's writing is neat and sparkling, the dialogue expressively vernacular: a letter from local handyman Joe DeLay to his estranged wife, Ellen, for instance, is a gorgeous epistolary piece in a humble, homely voice. The central tragedy in the book is set in motion when Ellen leaves Joe after 25 years of marriage, to live alone in the woods and dress the animals that hunters kill, an act that encourages Quilli folk to think Ellen mad. The end of the narrative is diffuse, and some readers may be unconvinced that the brutality issue succeeds in lifting the novel out of its small-town tropes. But Wuori's real gift lies in his dark humor, oddball casting and ability to choreograph and perfectly capture those precise and often-camouflaged moments in a life when everything changes. Agent, Noah Lukeman. 10-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
