Challenging opportunities arose with either terrorized fierceness or deep, peaceful calm throughout this beautiful novel. Set in British Columbia, the novel opens on Frank Starlight polishing and closing up the home where he was raised by ‘the old man’ - his only words for a man that was like a father. Far away in an unnamed town, Emmy, and her six year old daughter, Winnie barely escape with their lives from Cadotte, a man, violent and angry at the world. While he and his friend Anderson were passed out from a night of alcohol and fighting, Emmy saw her opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. Saving her daughter from any abuse from these men fuelled her rage. Winnie, fought as desperately to protect her mother. The story that follows is the long road they travelled to get as far away as possible, with the knowledge that Cadotte would come after them. Emmy had no money to provide for her daughter or herself. Along the way they steal food and clothes, siphon gas and count on Cadotte’s old truck to carry them away.
Frank Starlight, a well respected man in the B.C. community of Endako, was the most comfortable out on the land where words are not necessary. The land is where he goes to sink into the quietness of the land and the rhythms of the natural world. It is on his sojourns alone that he photographs wildlife in their habitat. Frank Starlight has a good friend in Eugene Roth who lives on the small farm, but has little understanding for Frank’s deep love of the land or his reticence for using back-hoes and any labour saving devices. Their relationship is an easy going one, filled with humorous repartee. Roth does most of the talking - expounding on his exploits, trials and tribulations while Starlight listens quietly. They’ve lived as two bachelors for three years and their home reflects it. A story of redemption and hope, there are changes are in the offing for all of them. Emmy and Winnie learn what it feels like to be safe and loved. Starlight and Roth learn a bit more about order in their lives. To me, this story is also about labels. The labels we give to people that stick and do not even envisage or encourage change.
Some reviews I have read this morning, suggest that the story was ‘too slow’. I counter that such deep changes require a gradual coming together. Others suggested Starlight should not have be published. I disagree with both of these opinions. Unfinished, due to Richard Wagamese death on March 10, 2017, readers have the opportunity to imagine their own endings to this story. I found Starlight to be a lovely story, brutal, but soft and tender with the characters finding their way away from and towards the worst and the best in each other. Following the untimely ending of this story, there is ‘A Note on the Ending’ at the back of the book with the possibilities the author had in mind for the remainder of the book.
“I come to know right there that when you figure ya got nothin’,
goin’ back and movin’ on can feel like it’s all the same direction.”
~ Richard Wagamese, Starlight
Title: Starlight
Copyright: 2018 Estate of Richard Allen Wagamese Gilkinson
Author: Richard Wagamese
Publisher: McClellan & Stewart
Format: Unfinished Novel
ISBN: 978-0-7710-7084-6
ebook ISBN: 978-0-7710-7085-3
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