Article by Cecile Wehrman in The Journal,
Crosby, North Dakota
December 5, 2002.
The latest installment in the
fictional series of books set in Prairie Rose ND is just out. Author, Hadley Hoover,
has now written three books set in the doppelganger for Wildrose where she
spent time as a child.
Storm Path is a little darker than Hoover's first two tomes, but if you've
enjoyed the surreal pleasure of reading about fictional people in a town much
like one just a stone's throw away from us here in Divide County, you won't
want to miss what has been declared the last chapter in the Prairie Rose
trilogy.
Unlike its predecessors, Uncharted Territory and Hidden Crossing, which are
first-and-foremost love stories, Storm Path is as much about the destruction of
a relationship as it is the peril that destruction poses to people in the
vicinity. As usual, Hoover has hit the literary nail squarely on this rural
community's head. For only in small towns like ours does the breakdown of a
marriage so directly affect people nearby. We know their children. We see one
half of the couple in the grocery store. We sit on a local board with the other
half. Heck, we were probably at their wedding . . .
We laugh and we joke about such serious issues as long as we're not involved,
but 'fess up: when you hear of neighbors splitting up, aren't you just the
teensiest bit scared? It doesn't really matter if the break-up is due to some
drunken indiscretion, a long-time dalliance, domestic abuse, or middle-aged
wanderlust. In the back of your mind, somewhere, you wonder, "What if it
were me?"
Storm Path plays on just such insecurities. Two couples are faced with an
indiscretion by one member of their foursome. One couple, still in love, is
plagued by the realization that they never saw it coming, just as the wronged
wife is blindsided by her husband's infidelity with a woman he met on the
Internet.
For all the wonderful things the Internet can bring to rural America, and for
all the immediacy of the situation, we don't need the Internet for adultery.
Folks have been pursuing that pastime just fine for years without any help from
a computer. But Hoover uses this plot device as a means of bringing an exotic
and mysterious character to the town of Prairie Rose.
The story, in fact, is never more entertaining than when "Blyss
Hathaway" is trouncing up and down Main Street in Prairie Rose, asking for
directions to the home of her Internet paramour, "Frankie." As
hideous as the arrival of such a creature actually would be in a small town,
it's a hoot to read about Blyss because nothing so juicy (and most small-town
scandals are pretty darn juicy) has ever lived and breathed and dared to walk
down Main Street here-that we know of.
Though we feel badly for the woman wronged, it is hard to feel much sympathy
for the husband in Storm Path who apparently threw away his life for a fling
with some floozie. This is exactly the predicament of the couple who are best
friends of this fractured duo. How do they remain friends with both halves of
the couple, and do they even want to?
When we hear of infidelity in a small town, it's almost as if we are all
betrayed. If the neighbors we know so well can't overcome such impulses, who's
to say our spouse will, or that we won't be tempted ourselves? As the book's
stable couple struggles with these questions, they create a subtle rift in
their own relationship because neither wants to confront lingering doubts.
You can't get more real than the situations in Storm Path, even if the
fictional Prairie Rose continues to be just a little more successful than the
real town of Wildrose. I'm sad to see Hoover's trilogy come to an end because
I've enjoyed getting to know these folks she's introduced me to. On the other
hand, knowing Hoover's talent for striking at the heart of small-town reality,
any future stories are sure to smack of predicaments we can all relate to.
