North Country

To read Matt Bondurant is to make a commitment to the world of the novel. The setting is always rich, the cast of characters extensive, and their motivations deep and complex. Still, it’s worth every minute to get to experience a ride like North Country.

Tom Kaiser returns to North Chazy, New York, to try to put his life back together after a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force. His return isn’t celebrated by anyone save, perhaps, his father, whose ailing health prevents him from doing much. The two men share a love of radio surveillance, but the family tragedy that struck when Kaiser was a kid keeps them from growing closer.

Needing money, Kaiser begins working for a local man known for sleazy dealings and art collecting. It is this character, Donny LeClair, around whom the novel really circles, though Kaiser is the protagonist. Without LeCalir, though, very little would happen in the book.

Drug running, satellite tracking, fractured family dynamics, the dream of making a better tomorrow, and the awful ways people hurt one another unite in North Country, but don’t assume the book is without hope. Hope is a Bondurant hallmark, and it runs steady as the current under frozen Lake Champlain in this novel.