NOCTURNAL AMERICA

NOCTURNAL AMERICA, by John Keeble
University of Nebraska Press, 2006

NOCTURNAL AMERICA is a collection of short stories, loosely connected by time, place and characters. They take place in the rural areas of eastern Washington State, and even into Canada.

The book jacket says the stories hinge on love. I agree that love is a connecting element of the stories, but I argue that they hinge more on chaos and conflict than on love. Readers familiar with Wallace Stenger’s theme of wilderness will find familiar echoes in Keeble’s book. Open and wild places are prominent in NOCTURNAL AMERICA, but the concept of wilderness here stems more from the conflict of desires and dreams than from mountains and rivers.

I loved these stories because they seemed to be honest about life without a throwing of the hands up in the air in exasperation- there was redemption woven into each story, and into the collected whole. Each character dealt with conflict in their won way, and each was able to find some sort of peace that was not provided as a gimmick by the writer.

For example, in “I Could Love You (If I Wanted)”, the character Lola struggles with issues at once: caring for an aged and dying other with a history of resenting her daughter; breaking up with a boyfriend of convenience, and moving out of her apartment into a house in the country, all the while struggling to make ends meet. The biggest struggle is with her mother, and Lola concludes that “I could love you,” mostly because she knows her mother is dying.

One earlier reviewer said that Keeble got viewpoints of both the female and male characters just right, and I agree. In fact, that subject would be a great one for a literary group (high school, college, or adult) to discuss after reading two of the stories.

Another story dealt with a character whose car was involved in an accident which killed a young immigrant women. The woman’s fiancé, also an immigrant, struggled to find a way to pronounce forgiveness.

All of the stories are relatively easy to read, yet provide ample food for thought for more serious readers. I look forward to reading them again, and to examining the other works by Keeble. He was a new author to me, but has written several novels as well as an account of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

George R. Pasley