CORRECTING THE LANDSCAPE

CORRECTING THE LANDSCAPE
By Marjorie Kowalski Cole
HarperCollins, 2006

This is an Alaska novel, but it has next to nothing to do with hunting or fishing.

Set in modern day Fairbanks, the novel tells the story of a weekly newspaper publisher who is falling on hard financial times. Each of the other characters in the story experiences their own “hard times,” and the plot centers on their emotional response to failure. An Irish immigrant without green card status is discovered by the INS; a Native Alaskan woman who has been married and divorced four times struggles to raise her child in the modern world without forgetting her native traditions; A land developer always successful in business is divorced by his wife, then later dumped by his artistic girlfriend.

Each of those characters find their own personal landscape in need of correction, but the title of the book comes from a poem written by the Irish immigrant, and it refers to the making protest, generally in some form of artistic manner.

When do you let go of something or someone you love? When do you take a leap of faith into some new direction? How can you hold your head up after failing? The characters in this story found themselves asking those same questions.

I really enjoyed the plot line in this novel. The text itself is not great prose, but the story line is thoughtful and true. It’s especially nice to see a story that is not a success story and neither a tragedy. The characters in the story turn out to be winners not because they succeeded but because they adapted and because they discovered their real selves.

I say this is an Alaska novel, and it is. Some particular regional references are explained by the writer, but a few others go unexplained and would be totally lost on someone not familiar with the regional cultures. Too much explanation might just spoil the narrative, which is a good one, so bear with what you don’t understand.

George R. Pasley