One pleasure of writing fiction is creating fascinating characters who inhabit an intricate world of the author's making. And one of the marks of great fiction is how intensely a reader is pulled into that world, becoming an observer of the drama almost as if he or she were part of the narrative.
Andrew Krivák's debut novel, "The Sojourn," shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2011, is one of those great books. And so is his new novel, "The Signal Flame," which picks up where the first ended and chronicles the sorrows and joys of a family led by patriarch Jozef Vinich as it becomes tangled with the sad fate of another family, the Youngers.
"The Sojourn" was based on stories told by the author's grandfather, following Vinich's dangerous life as a conscripted Austro-Hungarian sniper near the end of World War I. On the opening page of "The Signal Flame," we learn that Vinich has died.
The protagonist of "The Signal Flame" is Bo Konar, Vinich's grandson and co-owner of the Endless Roughing Mill in eastern Pennsylvania. Bo has a sad past and a difficult present. He ventured away from his hometown only once, when he went to college in the early 1960s, studying classics and falling deeply in love with a woman who, at the end of the couple's first semester at school, died in an accident on Christmas Eve. That was too much for him; he left school, moved back home, went to work at his grandfather's mill and never left.
Present-day troubles exist, too, for Bo and his mother, Hannah. Bo's younger brother Sam is missing in action in Vietnam, a status with extra significance as Bo and Sam's father (Hannah's husband) went missing while in Europe during World War II, only to return to Pennsylvania in shame as a deserter.
Krivák's language throughout "The Sojourn" is lyrical and moving, often gorgeous without any pretense, and filled with evocative, elegant descriptions of settings, activities and actions of these memorable characters. Krivák describes Bo's romantic evening with his college girlfriend, listening to music on a record player, "then turned it down for 'Everybody Digs Bill Evans' and fell asleep next to each other while the needle softly hissed and bumped against the end of the album on the turntable, like the heart beating in his chest."
As more calamities unfold, the novel threatens to become one of despair and woe, yet the opposite occurs. In "The Signal Flame," Krivák has skillfully used these sad and fateful events to bring out the vast compassion, humanity and love of his rich, fully developed characters, who, in the end, have limited control of their lives, just like the rest of us.
This beautifully told story will remain with the reader as a haunting and rewarding memory for a very long time.
Jim Carmin is a writer and member of the National Book Critics Circle who lives in Portland, Ore.
The Signal Flame
By: Andrew Krivak
Publisher: Scribner, 254 pages, $26.
