Wolf Point [Paperback]

Edward Falco (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2006

A taut, dramatic literary thriller that examines betrayal, trust and forgiveness.Tom Walker, a 57-year-old businessman, knows better than to pick up a beautiful young woman hitchhiking with her dangerous-looking boyfriend, but he stops for them anyway. He's been living alone, his life ruinously off course, in such utter isolation from everyone he has ever loved that he welcomes the company and the excitement. But as T finds himself pulled into the chaos of their world in a way he will barely survive, he comes to see his personal history and experiences in an altered and troubling light.Edward Falco brings stunning emotional depth and tense action to unforgettable characters as they journey through the mundane world to places where illusions fail and they must face their hidden selves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Thomas "T" Walker is a 57-year-old businessman trying to put his life together after downloading a questionable photo from the Internet and getting busted for child pornography. Driving from Virginia to Canada, Walker, against his better judgment, picks up young couple Jenny and Lester in New York. The seductive Jenny immediately begins flirting with Walker; Walker responds; Lester provides slow-burn menace. Slowly, the couple give Walker their story: they are fleeing a Tennessee drug dealer from whom Lester has stolen (and lost) $40,000. Jenny's advances get increasingly overt; Lester's jealousy matches them. As Walker drives on toward their destination, a cabin at Wolf Point near Ontario Bay, Falco gets considerable mileage probing Walker's psyche as he contemplates past mistakes, while Jenny hints at the possibility of a serious relationship and Lester tries to extract a lump sum from the once-successful Walker for a payoff. The intriguing climax features a series of not quite smoothly foreshadowed revelations about Jenny's past and her relationship with Lester, along with a shooting that may spell the end of this uncomfortable ménage. Falco, whose selected stories were published by Unbridled in May as Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha, delivers a solid, small-scale thriller. (Oct. 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Falco, author of the much-praised short-story collection, Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha (2005), offers a compelling novel about the darker side of humanity and delves pointedly into the complexities of human sexuality. Falco's sentient approach leaves the reader thoughtfully disturbed rather than pointlessly horrified by these thematic explorations. Tom "T" Walker, Jenny, and Lester are companions in this tale of vicarious adventure, with darkness and pain being the desired experience. T is the voyeur. He is seeking escape from his own suffering and does so by offering Jenny and Lester, two overtly dangerous-looking hitchhikers, a ride. With clean and precise prose, the three lives are written easily into the landscape of contemporary American problems: drug addiction, sexual abuse, and extreme family dysfunction. The climax is filled with unbearable tension, and the temptation is strong to skip ahead to see who lives. Upon reflection, the reader will experience the novel both as thriller and social commentary. Andrea Japzon
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Unbridled Books; First Trade Paper Edition edition (August 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932961305
• ISBN-13: 978-1932961300
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,540,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ed Falco's novel, The Family Corleone, based on pages extracted from Mario Puzo's Godfather screenplays, is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing on May 8, 2012. His most recent books include the story collections, Burning Man (SMU, 2011), and the novel Saint John of the Five Boroughs (Unbridled, 2009). Other books include Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha: New and Selected Stories (Unbridled, 2006), Wolf Point, a novel,(Unbridled, 2006) and In the Park of Culture, a collection of short fictions from The University of Notre Dame Press. His earlier works include the novel Winter in Florida, the hypertext novel, A Dream with Demons, the hypertext poetry collection, Sea Island, and a chapbook of prose poem, Concert in the Park of Culture, as well as two collections of short stories: Acid and Plato at Scratch Daniel's & Other Stories. Acid won the Richard Sullivan Prize from the University of Notre Dame, and was a finalist for The Patterson Prize. He has won a number of other prizes and awards for his writing, including an NEA Fellowship in fiction, a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in playwriting, the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Short Fiction from The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry from The Southern Review, The Mishima Prize for Innovative Fiction from The Saint Andrews Review, a Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, two Individual Artist's Fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and The Governor's Award for the Screenplay from The Virginia Festival of American Film. His stories have been published widely in journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, and TriQuarterly, and collected in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and several anthologies, including, Blue Cathedral: Short Fiction for the New Millennium. An early innovator in the field of digital writing, Falco's online work includes Self-Portrait as Child w/Father (Iowa Review Web), Circa 1967-1968 (Eastgate Reading Room), "Charmin' Cleary" (Eastgate Reading Room), and "Chemical Landscapes Digital Tales (with photographer Mary Pinto, in Volume I of The Electronic Literature Collection).

Falco lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he is the director of Virginia Tech's MFA program, and he edits The New River, an online journal of digital writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars (4.5) A perfect symmetry..., September 10, 2005

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wolf Point (Hardcover)

A mature man, driving alone from Virginia to the Thousand Islands near the Canadian border, impulsively stops to pick up two hitchhikers, Jenny and Lester, a young woman and her long-haired companion. The driver, T. Aloysius Walker, is attempting to repair a broken life, marriage and family a thing of the past. He realizes it isn't smart to stop for these two, but he does it anyway, longing for a change, any change in the isolated monotony of his recent existence. He gets far more than he bargained for. At fifty-seven, T is still attractive, maintaining an athletic build. When Jenny says that she is twenty-three, T thinks she is probably younger; from the start, she flirts openly with him, while Lester, a supposed ex-boyfriend glowers from the back seat of T's new Range Rover. When T reveals his destination, Jenny is enthusiastic and says that's where they are headed as well.

At the core of all is a moral conundrum, a man's life on autopilot for so long that he has lost touch with the reasons for getting through each day. Seduced by his own curiosity, he has stepped so far out that he can't retreat. So he goes forward, now cleverly seduced by a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. The hitchhikers act out their roles on another plane of existence, long inured to violence in a world that takes everything and gives back nothing. T clings to a naiveté that seems either desperate or impossibly innocent for a man of his years. Stranded in a parallel universe, T's is a willing hostage to fate, unconnected to those controlling his future, caught in a moment of reckoning he never sees coming, so wrapped in his miasma of memories.

What happens when a man on the downside of life picks up two strangers, with nothing to recommend them but a menace they wear so casually? Trouble with a capitol T. You might think that a man who makes this kind of foolish mistake deserves whatever happens to him. Yet in the dark silence of the isolated cabin and the water, a two-pronged drama plays out, two separate realities evolving as the past mixes inextricably with the present. Falco so beautifully manipulates his characters that their actions define the moral landscape of an indifferent world, turning away from the unsightly, the hidden horrors that lurk, twisting innocence into misshapen loyalty.

From the first page, the author is slyly skeptical of his protagonist's motives, shadowing every action with a reminder of the delicate balance of this situation. As though in a waking nightmare, T dances with Jenny and Lester, sometimes graceful, sometimes clumsy, but never, never leading. In the end, he is confronted with his own mortality and the consequences of careless, if not self-destructive, choices. Luan Gaines/2005.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quintessential Falco with dark twists and human foibles, September 5, 2005

By 

Laurel Johnson (Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wolf Point (Hardcover)

Tom Walker, known as T to his friends, is traveling from his home in Virginia to Upstate New York. Despite his wealth and business success, T's life is a shambles. Walker lost his family and reputation unexpectedly. This trip to a place he was once happy is a frantic effort to regain peace and focus. He's empty, emotionally isolated, and hoping a return to old
haunts near Wolf Point will help him feel alive again. Well, be careful what you hope for, T, because you just might get it!

Hitching a ride north is the type of blonde few men could pass by, no matter how many warning bells go off in their heads. Jenny Cross is curvaceous, oozing sexuality. Hitching with her is Lester, a macho tough guy carrying a guitar case. From the moment Jenny slides into the seat beside T, she plays the sweet seductress, a purring nubile kitten. Lester, on the other hand, has a troubling, threatening edge. T mentally prepares for trouble sooner or later in their journey.

The games begin immediately and accelerate once T, Jenny, and Lester reach a cabin at Wolf Point. Plans to rob T and steal his SUV are put on temporary hold when Jenny and Lester decide their benefactor might give them $60,000 if they play him right. Jenny shares Lester's story during quiet times
cuddling with T, who's more than twice her age. Lester tells him Jenny's story while fishing, leaving T to sort the truth from fiction. T knows instinctively that lives are in the balance, but will it be his or theirs?

The tale is told suspensefully through dysfunctional characters whose flaws are handled sympathetically by a gifted wordsmith. Wolf Point is quintessential Falco as he skillfully reveals the darker twists and frailties of human nature.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A black heart, but all heart, and very fine, August 19, 2006

By 

John Domini (Des Moines, IA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wolf Point (Hardcover)

While I've written about this novel for print, praising not just WOLF POINT but a number of Falco's fictions (in hypertext as well as on the page), I care enough about this author and accomplishment to honor them both again in this medium. Falco's latest novel is superb. It erupts with from its opening sentence's "pulp tableau" (a hot young blonde hitchiking, not quite hiding the greasy thug traveling with her) like a perfectly timed and vividly colored fireworks display against a thoroughly noir night.

The girl is Jenny, a stubborn but tormented creation to stand with the finest femme fatales. Her tough backup, Lester, veers intriguingly between brute and clown. And the man who picks this duo up is the hurting and withdrawn "T," more troubled than either of the others in his way. The process by which the two runaways bring T to a refreshed awareness and vitality, all while merely trying to save their own skins, creates a classic set-piece of a weary mule, a carrot, and a stick.

In other words, WOLF POINT is expertly crafted, its rough trade taking place in ever-smaller spaces -- yet what lingers with you is its emotional depth. I have a few cavils about this book, off in the rarified atmosphere of High Lit. But I must acknowledge, above all, the impact of the wrenching choices this story hammers out, and the key turning points it gives voice. The title may speak of wolves, but the howl is entirely human.