With five novels, one story collection and a collaborative novella (with Kate Bernheimer) under his belt, Laird Hunt has demonstrated an inimitable penchant for variety. From the lighthearted noir to the surreal mind-bender, from the rural Midwest to the inner city: It seems there's nothing Hunt can't do, nowhere he won't go. His fantastical, Italo Calvino-cum-Thomas Bernhard homage, "Ray of the Star," is written as a series of chapter-length sentences. His previous novel, "Kind One," features a revolving cast of five distinct narrators and is set during the Civil War. If it weren't for this fact, readers might start in on "Neverhome" and do a double take, making sure that it's Hunt, and not Charles Frazier or Tim O'Brien, penning the pages.
Ash Thompson is a conflicted dreamer. She has a thirst for adventure but longs for home. She can "shoot a jackrabbit out of its ears at fifty yards," kill rebels and drink whiskey with her Union company. "Neverhome" is her reprise, her chosen burden, her fear of death, her reality.
Ash's real name is Constance, an identity she leaves with her husband, Bartholomew, on a farm in Randolph County, Ind. Their agreement seems simple enough: "I was strong and he was not"; "We were about the same small size but he was made out of wool and I was made out of wire." A well-wishing woman in a passing town loses her chemise as she climbs a tree, and when Ash offers her a jacket, she earns the nickname Gallant Ash, much to her disdain.
Aside from the day-to-day conundrums of concealing her gender, Ash begins to confront the demons of memory and the repercussions of war. When Bartholomew sends her a letter enclosed with a thimbleful of dirt from the farm, she eats it so she'll remember home. On many occasions, she's forced to drop her pack — along with Bartholomew's letters — and she's taken prisoner, wounded and entangled in a confusing proposition from another woman. On top of all that, her mother's aphorisms of the past begin to haunt her. "You can't ever know when the dead world will come to you. Only that it will. My mother liked to tell me that."
There are many things to admire in Hunt's most accessible novel: Ash's charming, lyrical impulse; the swiftly moving plot; the vividly drawn characters; Ash's roiling internal conflict. At the halfway point — and surprise after surprise — the novel turns from gender study to mystery. What is it, exactly, that's keeping Ash from home? Well, it's complicated.
Josh Cook is the editor at large of Minneapolis-based Thirty Two Magazine.
