You’Ll Find a Bit of Yourself in Fictional Franklin Notch ; Colorful Characters Include Devil Himself
By REBECCA RULE
The Comfort of Our Kind, a debut novel by Tom Stoner, is a strange and wonderful book – full of wonders, that is – set in fictional, but realistic, Franklin Notch, New Hampshire, with side trips to a drum festival in Vermont and Disney World.
Our hero and primary narrator, Daniel “Boone” Moffatt, has problems. Which is good, because without a problem, there is no story. His immediate problem is the upcoming 50th anniversary of his parents – Wes Moffatt, local celebrity and host of a popular cable TV show, and Sister Moffatt, former nun and longtime psychic. Sister dreams the future, though she doesn’t know exactly what the dreams mean until they are realized. Boone’s challenge is to unite the family to celebrate the anniversary, as dreamed by his mom decades earlier. But brother Reggie, last seen in an alcoholic spiral after his divorce and thought to be homeless in Disney World, seems unlikely to show up and complete the family circle. Which sends Boone and his miserable sister, Veronica, a grumpy nurse with a rebellious teenage daughter, on a mission to retrieve Reggie in time for the party.
This, too, is complicated by Sister’s dreams. Sure the decades- old dream of Reggie in a castle seems to be coming true in a twisted way. But the dream that Boone will die after seven encounters with the devil also seems to be accelerating toward deadly conclusion. The devil makes several colorful appearances in the book, which begins with Satan at the gate:
You know how things happen.
You’re thirteen years old, working at your first real job, and one morning while kneeling in the weed-clogged flower bed you look up because you sense a presence and sure enough, standing over you, watching you from the other side of the iron gate is a small man in a colorless suit and hat, whose face looks like he has just finished smiling; and you look from his face to his hands holding the bars and that’s when you see that his two pinkies are split at the tips like snakes’ tongues and he is wearing small diamond rings on each of the four clawlike tips.
Yikes. It’s not until Boone is older and has suffered other encounters with the Prince of Darkness – always in a different form – that he realizes the identity of the man at the gate who said, “So,” in a voice no different from any man, “You’re getting them by the roots?”
Shivers. And laughter. As you can tell from that passage, Stoner writes a heck of a sentence, and he walks the tightrope between horror and humor with uncanny balance.
In the Moffatts and their friends and enemies, readers will find a range of characters so wild and wide-ranging, we’re sure to find personalities – only slightly exaggerated – in whom we see ourselves or people we know. That’s part of the fun.
The crisp dialogue draws us straight in. Here’s a sample, but first a little context: Based on stories, that may or may not be true, told by Wes – self-appointed historian for Franklin Notch – a group of folks, who may or may not be Native Americans, are suing for ownership of half the town, leaving many of our favorites homeless and Wes in disgrace. Stirring the pot on his cable TV show, Wes says rude things about and to the claimants, some in the form of a poem. Everybody gets riled up. Harassment and vandalism ensue; a riot seems imminent. Boone, the chief of police, gets an early morning phone call from his father.
“Daniel, somebody poured red paint all over the front yard. The cat tracked it in, and I’ve got little red paw prints everywhere.”
I drove Beth’s car across the valley. I got there at the same time the camera crews showed up and the ex-cop woke up in his Lincoln.
“What the hell, Bobby. You were supposed to watch the place.”
“Sorry, Boone. Damned Indians slipped right by me. I guess I wasn’t counting on them being so sneaky.”
“They’re not real Indians, and they probably didn’t even see you. All you had to do was stay awake and blow the horn.”
“Sorry.”
The front yard was covered with bright red latex goo. The driveway was painted with the words TWEAK THIS.
Inside the house, there were little red cat tracks everywhere – across the counters, the floors, and the furniture.
Wes and Sister were sitting at the kitchen table in their pajamas, holding cups of coffee. Blood red paw prints meandered around the tabletop between them.
“Maybe I went too far,” he said.
“Just maybe,” I said. “I can’t believe you did that, considering the town meeting is tonight.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
This book made me smile on every page and wonder on every other. It’s a romp. A delight. One heck of a fantastic tale firmly rooted in reality – that is, how people handle trouble.
Who cares if Sister is really psychic and if her dreams accurately, but symbolically, predict the future? (Readers do.)
Who cares if Talbert’s Treaty, in which the future of the town lies, exists in reality or only in Wes’s imagination? (I’m not telling.)
Who cares if Reggie overcomes his issues and comes home from Disney World? (I do. I’m crazy about Reggie.)
Who cares if Veronica finds true love with a holistic hippie doctor from Vermont? (You will.)
Who cares if the Moffatt family hangs tough in their unconventional love for one another and for life? (Who wouldn’t?)
Stoner, a Texan who knows New Hampshire from his days living near Boston, writes with vitality, insight, imagination, humor and real affection, I think, for his characters and for the Granite State. Stoner makes us care about these folks, strange as they are, strange as we are.
Originally published by REBECCA RULE For the Monitor.
(c) 2008 Concord Monitor. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.