Customer Reviews

Surveyor

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As with his other novels, G.W. Hawkes offers in Surveyor deeply felt characters, intriguing plot lines, and sharply honed language. Metaphor, mystery, and the best kind of suspense--that which comes from a caring for the characters drawn on the page--keeps the reader turning not just from page to page but chapter to chapter. The relationship between the two desert-bound friends, their history, and the "invasion" of their space by a beautiful woman comingle to create a richly intriguing and well-wrought tale. Hawkes is able to divine the mysteries of the deeper forces of our lives and reveal them--in subtle desert colors, in the rhythm of dialogue, in the stirrings and gaits of character--across the pages of Surveyor with brilliant craft and utmost care.

I'm from Williamsport, where Hawkes teaches writing at Lycoming College, and so I've long known about his unusual story-telling gifts. This is a finely realized piece about two men who've been living alone for years, mapping the terrain in the American West, and the changes that occur in their relationship when various outsiders -- including a woman who has come to make an independent film -- come into their "terrain." Richly layered with unobtrusive symbols and interrelationships, also well-informed about its subject matter. Recommended.