The men of the American Wild West called it the "shining times," when the law held no sway over any place beyond the Mississippi. This was the last true American independence, and though it died out a long time ago, the new novel from T.C. Boyle takes this tradition of renegades and turns it into something violent.

Twenty-five-year-old Adam worships one of these survivalist mountain men, even renaming himself after him: Colter. He's manic, raging and growing his own stash of opium poppies, and he easily falls in with 40-something Sara, a hardcore member of an extremist anti-government movement. Together they are citizen soldiers, making war (not love) and defiantly, desperately in search of something to burn down—and burn they do. Adam is also the son of ex-Marine Sten, the epitome of claustrophobic rage and frustration, who kills a thug with his bare hands while on vacation in Costa Rica.

As these three stubborn minds draw together like fire and kindling, violence becomes more than an inherited trait within one family, but a syndrome of a nation built on revolution and stoicism, distorted by fear and hysteria. It may be a stroke of genius that the characters themselves are maddening in their own right, leaving readers with a pounding pulse not only from suspense but from infuriation.

The best-selling, unbelievably prolific Boyle has described The Harder They Fall as a counterpoint to his historical novel, San Miguel (2012), which unfolded through the perspectives of three women who sought refuge and sanctuary on an island off the coast of California. It was a departure for Boyle, and now the pendulum swings back to high-adrenaline zaniness and pertinacious, destructive misfits. Individualism remains central, but unlike San Miguel, it's far from contemplative. It is a juggernaut, twisted to borderline psychotic.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Seventy-year-old Vietnam vet Sten Stensen returns home triumphant after killing an armed robber on a vacation cruise, only to find that his emotionally fragile son, Adam, is involved with an older woman dedicated to a right-wing anarchist group. Soon, Adam has slipped into schizophrenia and shot two people, leading to a major manhunt. With a 100,000-copy first printing and a 12-city tour.

An elderly California couple's vacation cruise is turned upside down when bandits attack their party at a Central American nature preserve. Former high school principal and Vietnam vet Sten Stensen reacts with unexpected fury when an armed thief approaches him, strangling him to death. While viewed as a hero back home, Sten's disturbed by the violence that's visited his life and will deal with more as the mental state of his emotionally troubled adult son, Adam, grows worse. A paranoid survivalist who fashions himself after 19th-century mountain man John Coulter, Adam has taken up with another disquieted soul, Sara, a local farrier and proponent of radical right-wing ideas. A fight with his parents after they sell his late grandmother's cabin, where he has been living, sends him spiraling downward. He retreats to a deep-woods bunker with his weapons where his shooting of a perceived "alien" will set off a massive manhunt. VERDICT Inspired by a true story (and also echoing recent events in Pennsylvania), Boyle tellingly explores the anger, paranoia, and violence lurking in the shadowlands of the American psyche. A powerful and profoundly unsettling tale. [See Prepub Alert, 9/22/14.]—Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Boyle's (San Miguel) hypnotic narrative probes the complexities of heroism, violence, power, and resistance. At its heart are ex-Marine and retired school principal "Sten" Stensen and his schizophrenic son, Adam, who arms himself against shadowy "hostiles" and identifies with heroic 19th-century wilderness guide John Colter. On vacation in Costa Rica, Sten kills a gunman attempting to rob his tour group. Back home in Mendocino, Calif., he becomes an instant celebrity for his act of vigilante justice, and he is drawn into a citizen brigade whose mission is to protect nearby forests from the South American drug cartels that despoil the land. Meanwhile, Adam forms a tenuous, lust-fueled bond with anti-government activist Sara Jennings. Driven further into delusion by her brushes with the law and his physical confrontation with his father, Adam flees for his secret camp in the woods; when one of the citizen patrollers challenges him, Adam shoots that man, and soon another. As the manhunt intensifies, Sten realizes his son's involvement and his own inability to change his son's fate. Written with both clarity and compassion, each of the novel's characters inhabits a rich and convincing private world. As they traverse a landscape none of them control, their haunting stories illuminate the violent American battle with otherness. (Mar.)