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Wolf Point

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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.

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.

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.

WOLF POINT by Edward Falco is a far larger and deeper novel than its relatively small size --- 234 pages --- would immediately portend. This is no reflection on the narrative, which clips right along at a pace that leaves readers gasping for breath, implicitly daring them to stop reading. The events, which for the most part take place over a couple of fateful days but resonate backward and forward in time, linger long after the last paragraph is read.

Reading WOLF POINT is akin to discovering an unpublished, collaborative manuscript created by John Cheever and Jim Thompson. The narrative opens with Tom Walker ("...my friends and family call me 'T'..."), a 57-year-old businessman, picking up a much younger man and woman who are hitchhiking outside of Syracuse, NY. There is an immediate sense that all is not right; indeed this is communicated to the reader by Walker himself, who knows better than to stop --- which, in the words of the narrative, is precisely why he does. The hitchhikers are Lester and Jenny, who introduce themselves as brother and sister initially but who are far more, and less, than that. In reality Lester and Jenny are on a panicked run, the reason for which may be remedied by the application of a large amount of cash.

And it turns out that Walker has plenty of that. The trio heads for a small community called Thousand Islands, a place that has significant meaning for each of them. One expects the situation to inevitably spiral downward, and it does, almost from the moment that Walker opens his door --- and his life --- to Lester and Jenny. Each and every principal here is carrying baggage. Still recovering from a divorce, Walker is unable to fathom the whys and wherefores of what has happened in his life, or that he is to blame for at least part of what has occurred. Lester is an edgy loser; whatever potential he might have had has been derailed, perhaps permanently, by drugs. Jenny is badly damaged and is ready to do damage in kind, at times without even knowing it. Before the story's conclusion, three lives will be brutally changed in a process of rough catharsis and, in one case, redemption paid with dear coin.

WOLF POINT is a haunting work, a cautionary tale that by turns demonstrates that while no deed --- good or evil --- goes unpunished, absolution and redemption are possible if one is willing to pay the price. This is a work to be savored and, more importantly, reread. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I knew, reading the delightfully specific, musical second sentence of Edward Falco's Wolf Point, that the book would be something special:

"On the side of the road a pulp tableau coalesced: a young woman somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one in red leather pants over black boots and a white silk blouse opened three buttons down, with blond hair flying out from her head wild and wind blown and radiant in the horizontal light of late afternoon, put one foot up on a black guitar case and stuck out her arm in hitchhiker pose."

Fifty-seven-year-old Tom "T" Walker pulls over in that horizontal light to pick up the girl--Jenny, her names turns out to be--and the long-haired, hoodlum-looking older man she's traveling with, Lester. Tom knows the hitchhikers are probably trouble, that they may well rob him and leave him for dead a few miles on, but he picks them up anyway: why he does so is the first mystery of this brief, compelling novel.

Falco follows his three characters during the troubled weekend they spend together, first driving through the night in Tom's Land Rover, then at a cabin on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. As the relationships among his principals evolve and unravel Falco slowly peels back the layers of their characters. Jenny and Lester reveal themselves to Tom in stages, in their behavior and in the stories they tell about themselves, though how much of what they say is deliberate falsehood and how much the product of misguided interpretation is open to debate. Tom, on the other hand, shares nothing of himself with his fellow characters. His back-story is revealed to readers in his memories, while he tries--amid the dramatic events of his present day--to understand for himself just how he came to be where he is, how he turned into the man for whom the prospect of being robbed and beaten by strangers was preferable to its alternative. Falco's book is concerned both with whether Tom will survive his weekend by the river, and perhaps more importantly with whether survival is something he is still interested in.

There is one element of Tom's back-story that struck me as improbable, that his ex-wife would have exacted from him the punishment, so inappropriately severe, that has left him damaged. Otherwise, I have no complaints: Wolf Point is a fine, gripping piece of writing that you'll want to down in a sitting or two.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

I was moved and stunned by an incredibly good writer. Wow, what a discovery! I hope some of the other reviewers will recommend other authors of this calibre (Franzen, Wolfe, Irving, Chabon) that I may not know of. (Email your suggestions: etaub1@aol.com)

Ed Falco's new book, WOLF POINT, explores life's difficult questions with a skill, an efficiency, worthy of any master writer. T, the main character, is out taking a road trip in upstate NY, when he comes across two young hitchikers. It's a risky move to take them on, but T does just that. What happens next is a study of trust between these two hitchikers and their driver. Falco explores the question of how well you can know somebody you've just met and, in using flashbacks into the history of T's life, Falco simultaneously explores the question of how well you can know somebody that you've been with for a long time (in this case, T's ex-wives, lovers, etc.). With his interaction with his two passangers and through flashbacks, T disects his failed marriages, his previous love affairs, his childhood, and his capacity for abuse. In a thriller that never lets you stop turning pages, T reconciles questions about his abusive childhood and why he downloaded a picture of child ponography that, in his mind, started the whole crazy and dangerous adventure with the hitchikers.

This is a serious book that examines some serious questions about what it means to live a good, happy, life, free from abusive relationships.

Ed Falco's short stories contain many scenes inside cars and many of Falco's protagonists are young seductive females. WOLF POINT does not disappoint in this respect: In addition to much of the early parts of WOLF POINT taking place inside of a car, the 57 year-old protagonist, T, finds himself seductively tortured by a very attractive young lady in her early 20s. This seduction is not just added to the book to make it fun to read, it is included because through these scenes, T unravels the answers to the questions of his life.

In the end, both T and the reader learn lessons about what it means to be honest and what it means to give and take abuse. Good literature teaches lessons.

Enjoy some good literature; read WOLF POINT today.

Tom "T" Walker, the fifty-seven year old, disconsolate businessman, gets more than he bargains for when, on a road trip from Salem, Virginia to the Thousand Islands near the Canadian border, he picks up Jenny and Lester, a couple of suspiciously disaffected hitchhikers.

Outwardly the couple appears to be ok, but as Lester broods in the back seat, and Jenny, sits provocatively dressed in the front, beginning a dance of flirtation and seduction, Tom begins to think that he should have known better.

Perhaps Tom is deliberately flirting with danger, trying to jump-start his stalled life. Convicted of possessing child pornography in New York, Tom has been exiled to Salem, and has found himself isolated, trapped in an indolence that manifested itself through addictions to computer games, chess, jazz, and good wine.

Now an emotionally damaged man, Tom is reeling from the failure of his marriage, a separation from his children, and the fall out from the damaging conviction. The memories of his family now seem to come to him from another lifetime, another dimension of existence.

Tom is left to shake off the weight of memory; memories of a once happier time, when he was young, idealistic, and also in love with his much older college teacher, Carolyn. Carolyn, of course, has long since died, and he is old, and her lively world, that he had so desired, is lost to him forever. Perhaps all this emotional baggage and his desire to find love again is what has drawn him to the beautiful, sexy Jenny Cross.

As the trio arrives at the small community of Wolf Point, on the edge of the Saint Lawrence River, the situation inexorably spirals downward. When Tom finally learns the truth about his companions - she's a stripper on the run from Mexican drug dealers and he's an idiot druggie who thinks he's a character in a daytime soap opera - it's all too late, as our embattled hero is already caught up in their delicate and deadly dance of sex, power, and seduction.

Lester, his mind addled with drugs, is the one most living on the edge, and it doesn't take long for him to confront Tom and demand money, seeing the wealthy man as their one last hope of a ticket to freedom. Jenny, for her part, comes across as innocently vulnerable; is she genuine in her affection for Tom, or is she clandestinely in cahoots with Lester?

Jenny certainly makes Tom feel comfortable and at ease, and maybe just more human, something he admits that he hasn't felt in such a long time, but this thought somehow seems dangerous. Tom sees Jenny as a type of Doris day character, simultaneously cute and beautiful, her sexuality obvious but unthreatening, On the other hand, he sees Lester looking like a hometown rebel with his long hair and black boots.

The action plays out amidst the quiet solitude and startling beauty of the cabin by Wolf Point. Lester, fuelled by an excess of drugs, steadily looses control, threatening both Jenny and Tom. For Tom, this journey becomes prophetic, full of anguish, as painful memories surge, taunting and confusing his every action; his haunted, yet contented college boy youth returning with a savage intensity. "He had an odd sense of time warping and bending back in on itself, casting him into the 60's again, only in another dimension."

Wolf Point is an elegantly written literary thriller, not a paragraph, sentence, nor a word wasted, each page and every slice of dialogue constantly serving to ratchet up the tension. The prose is graceful, but also shadowed and disturbing, giving us a painful view of those who have lived life less fortunate. Redemption for all three characters finally comes, but at a terrible price.

Tom has tried to feel himself as a "creature alive in the physical world, someone to whom anything might happen." His actions throughout his life had set into effect an infinite sequence and succession of actions, but it is through this final confrontation with a drug-crazed madman on the calm waters of the Saint Lawrence River, that he can finally achieve peace and perhaps find some hope of absolution. Mike Leonard November 05.

lead to poor outcomes. A man errs and the end is almost ordained. Nothing heroic, the reader feels little for the characters and is unmoved by the rescue of survivors. It could have gone otherwise and the reader doesn't care.

Too much of the tale is told inside T's head. Too little happens. I found the ending a let down; everything was tied up too neatly. It would have been far more interesting if the drug dealer had found them.