The Signal (Platinum Readers Circle (Center Point)) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Ron Carlson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009 | Series: Platinum Readers Circle (Center Point)

A beautifully written and suspenseful tale of love and peril by an award-winning writer

Backpacking into the Wind River Mountains on their tenth annual trip, Mack and his wife, Vonnie, find the magnificent woods and stunning mountains of Wyoming full of ghosts and danger. Mack comes from a long line of ranchers, and his dedication to keeping the family land has led him into penury and a life of crime. Vonnie is a fiercely intelligent, headstrong girl who came west for love, only to have it stolen from her bit by bit.

TheyÂ’ve made this trip to say goodbye to each other, but as they navigate the trails they know so well, they come to understand the true nature of their wounds. And Mack has one more secret: he is trying to receive a signal and retrieve something that has fallen from the sky. It is a beacon that will lead them into a wood far darker than theyÂ’ve ever imagined. Ron CarlsonÂ’s love for the mountains and his mastery of fiction radiate in the pages of this thrilling, fast-paced love story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The dense Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming is where Carlson (Five Skies) sets his brooding latest, a tale of expired love and desperate measures. Mack, son of a longtime rancher, has made many missteps in life, culminating in a recent stint in jail where he'd rusted like an old post when the weather turned. While he's in jail, his recently ex-wife Vonnie agrees to join him one last time on their annual ritual of backpacking through the Wyoming wilderness to fish, camp and rediscover each other. Mack, though, has a hidden motive: a friend/technical genius has hired him to retrieve a valuable drone that's crash-landed in the forest. Carlson describes the couple's six days wandering the wooded terrain in delicate, measured prose, careful to miss neither the lush scenery nor the incrementally amplified tension as Mack edges closer to his prize and shady characters from the past appear. Carlson has produced a work of masterful fiction, combining the sad inevitability of a doomed relationship with sheer nail-biting suspense. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Review

"The Signal takes us into terrain that's stunning and terrible. In doing so, it becomes both an elegy to a broken marriage and a heart- stopping, suspenseful thriller. It's a difficult journey, but relax: with Ron Carlson, you really are in expert hands."
-New York Times Book Review

"Carlson never drops an extra word or a false phrase, even as "The Signal" accelerates like an avalanche, suspicion rolling into fear and then roaring down with a conclusion that shakes the ground. If men can't be brought back to fiction by books as fine as this one, it's their own damn fault."
-Washington Post

"Ron Carlson's new novel is a love story and a wilderness adventure that mounts to a climax of shocking, and satisfying, violence...Carlson paces his tale with craft and care, never hurrying. "The Signal" is about broken innocence and how, for the individual at least, balance might be found again. Carlson's a romantic --- even when he's writing about failings, folly and violence. This novel...has a lingering elegance and power. Lives go wrong, "The Signal" says, but they can be repaired too, if we find our centers and attend to what's around us."
-Los Angeles Times

"Read Ron Carlson's latest THE SIGNAL and you'll be convinced that the answer to your worries resides in the woods, in getting back to the basics... It's a sweet, tidy little book about a broken rancher. And yet it won't just help you pass the time, it will help you out."
-Esquire

"Long revered as a master of the short story, Carlson has a talent for describing landscape (both internal and external), and that translates here intact. At fewer than 200 pages, its beach ready, too."
-GQ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 215 pages
• Publisher: Center Point Pub; Lrg edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602855706
• ISBN-13: 978-1602855700
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,310,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Bad....Not Great, July 7, 2009

By 

The Good News - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Signal: A Novel (Hardcover)

I continue to be disappointed by Amazon (and professional) reviews that over-rate books. The Signal was a 3.5 star book...nothing wrong with that and not a reason to avoid the novel. The Signal is well-written and I found the portions of the book that were reflective on a failed marriage the most interesting.

I do fault the author for injecting unnecessary, and in my opinion, unrealistic plots into an otherwise good story line.

The basis of the story is that an out-of-luck, down-and-out, divorced rancher has been hired to locate a missing 'drone' aircraft in the outback wild. Strange enough...but he decides to bring along his ex-wife for 'one last annual fishing trip'.

Ignore the fact that we have a rancher searching for a drone, ignore that he decides that he can bring along his ex-wife (who is living with someone else), ignore that he seems to believe that he can search for a drone during the trip without his ex-wife's knowledge, and you have a book that is 95% satisfying, 80% of the time.

Would have been a better book if the 'Signal' was left out of The Signal. A good effort, but not without flaws.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love of the mountains, September 11, 2009

By 

wogan "the book reader" - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Signal: A Novel (Hardcover)

In effect this short novel is a paean to the wild mountains and outdoors, all else is secondary and if ignored really makes it a better book. Mark a troubled man who grew up on a ranch made into one of the guest ranches that have been created to save the failing ranches. Mark resorts to some very shady activities to make money after his father's death. He wants to save his ranch but feels he cannot do what his father did in being a welcoming presence to guests.
The main body deals with a trip into the wild wildness of the mountains with his ex wife, a trip they have taken before. He is also seeking a drone that he has been hired to find and hopefully it will finance the saving of his ranch with the money earned. Not enough is explained, so that plot almost becomes secondary, especially since they also become hunted by some poachers they run across. To have them run from that but also hunted because of the drone is an exercise in irrationality.
The beauty and worth of the story is in the love of the country, the mountains and the outdoors - with descriptions so wonderful and complete you can smell and feel their presence - that makes it a book worth reading.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How the Weather Was, June 10, 2009

By 

David E. Knight "Wordhog" (Mid-America) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Signal: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ron Carlson proves up to Gertrude Stein's challenge in this fine piece of writing. That it is a compelling story, tempts you to rush through the chapters to know the outcome and final resolution of the relationship between the two main characters. But do not cheat yourself in this read. Dwell in the efficiently pounding prose describing the magnificent mountain country of the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Carlson's eye and wordcraft captures both the grandness of the region and the reverent details of a land celestially conceived and created.

A good tale, extremely well told.