Smith Henderson

"'I'll put one in that boy's brain before I let you have him. That is a solemn fuckin promise.' He leaned forward. Pete flinched. The man spat on him. Then he whipped around and heaved his naked son up onto his hip and jogged into the brush…Another day at the office." (35)

There is lots of tough talk in this debut book. The rugged setting and gritty characters reminded me of some of my favorite authors, Daniel Woodrell, Cormac McCarthy, and Jon Clinch. Set in a rural part of Montana, Pete show more Snow is a social worker for Child Protective Services. Looking out for the needs of children is an interesting job for a man whose daughter detests him and who is barely able to hold his own life together. We soon learn that Pete doesn't shy away from difficult situations. When he investigates the curious case of Benjamin Pearl who is malnourished and dressed in rags, he repeatedly tries to help an angry survivalist who doesn't want any help.

Young Ben is just one of his many cases that drives Pete to the bars at night for some relief. And then, there is his personal tragedy: a broken marriage and a runaway teenage daughter. The author is in no hurry to tie up the many crossroads of Pete's life as he juggles his cases and travels the country in search of his daughter. The logistics of travel are not so easy in this part of the country. Wyoming is such a vast and wild area that even the town Pete lives in is named Tenmile for its distance from "civilization." His clients are spread over a big area from the back woods to the empty spaces of the plains. Daughter Rachel uses the state name as a verb when she "wyoms" (which I interpreted as an aimless sort of wandering) through her life.

I ended up caring about (most) of these hardscrabble characters that were so difficult to like in the beginning. Smith Henderson knows something about living in poverty and the overwhelming odds against those living on the fringes of society…and he doesn't flinch or mince words when he tells their stories. This was a remarkable debut, and I look forward to seeing what is next in Mr. Henderson's arsenal. show less

FOURTH OF JULY CREEK, by Smith Henderson.

Who is this guy, Smith Henderson, and where did he come from? Because this book is just so damn good! He's like Athena, who was born fully grown and armed, springing from the forehead of Zeus. Only this guy, this AUTHOR, has sprung fully armed with all the best tools of the writing trade from, from ... Hell, I don't know where from, but did I say how GOOD this book is?

I probably don't really need to summarize the plot, because the book's already been show more reviewed a few hundred times by now. But Pete Snow is a protagonist who will not be easily forgotten. A caseworker for the Department of Family Services in western Montana in the early Reagan years, Snow is overworked but fiercely dedicated, trying with everything he has to make a difference in the lives of some of the poorest and most screwed up people you have ever met. As a character, Snow is completely, fully realized. Henderson is inside the guy's head to an extent that, once you've started reading, it's almost impossible to get Snow out of YOUR head. While Pete tries to save the least of our brethren, his own family has disintegrated. His wife and thirteen year-old daughter (and oh, the daughter, another sad story, and another character Henderson OWNS, he is so inside her head too) have left. Pete is living in a cabin in the mountains, off the grid. Hey, I don't want to summarize this complex, moving, at times frighteningly horrific story. That's already been done. Then there is Jeremiah Pearl and his eleven year-old son, Benjamin. Pearl is a survivalist, a religious crazy, a guy who hates the government and civilization in general. When they enter Pete's purview in tiny Tenmile, Montana, the story takes off, and you can't help but hang on for your life in a tale that takes you from Montana to Texas to Indiana to Washington and Oregon and a lot of strange places in between. Henderson knows these places. He knows the Yaak wilderness - the forests and mountains and valley - as well as the red light district of Seattle and the main drag at UT-Austin. And he makes you feel that you know these places too.

What makes this book such a ride? Think Waco, think Ruby Ridge, think the Unabomber, and maybe even a little bit of Jonestown with its sacramental Kool-Aid. Put all this kind of stuff deep in the trackless "rain forest" and "jungle" of the Yaak. Send in cops and the ATF and FBI on a concentrated all-out manhunt. And put Pete Snow, this imperfect, battered but dedicated "priest" of the secular religion of Social Work, right smack in the middle of it, trying to save a young boy. (In fact there are other cases he's covering that are equally interesting and morbidly horrific, i.e. Cecil and Katie, and their abusive druggie mom.) And then there's the parallel plot of Pete's daughter Rachel (aka 'Rose'), who takes you deep into the terrifying, dark and ineffably sad world of teenage runaways.

Sorry, I can't get all this stuff into a review. There's just too much going on, but it all comes together masterfully, and there is a kind of redemption to be found, finally, if you manage to ride it out to the end.

Influences? Comparisons? I first thought of a recent novel by another Montanan, Kim Zupan's THE PLOUGHMEN - another beautiful book about an equally grim subject. And the descriptions of the bars and clubs of Missoula made me think of the late James Crumley, whose PI noirs nailed those places so well. And the Yaak Valley, with its dope farmers and other weirdoes brought to mind the West Virginia stories of Pinckney Benedict. And poor, crazy, raging teenage Cecil and his doper mother brought back Earl Thompson's classic novel of Depression-era Kansas, A GARDEN OF SAND. In the end, however, Smith Henderson has created his own unique world here, and it couldn't be any more real - or terrifying - than it is. Final word: FOURTH OF JULY CREEK is, hands down, simply one of the best books I have read in the past ten years. My highest recommendation. show less

Pete Snow is a social worker in the Montana wilderness of Tenmile, a small town in the middle of nowhere outside of Missoula. He is divorced, fighting with his ex-wife and his surly teenage daughter, and trying to steer clear of his troubled brother who has recently beat up a parole officer and taken off to parts unknown. When a bedraggled boy is picked up in town, Pete decides to hike up into the wilderness to return the boy to his family. He has no idea that the boy’s father, a radical show more man named Benjamin Pearl, might just not want to be found.

Fourth of July Creek is about the unraveling of family and community as Benjamin Pearl becomes more paranoid and unpredictable and Pete’s personal life slides out of control with the disappearance of his daughter and an FBI investigation.

Smith Henderson’s first novel (he has published numerous short works and won the 2011 Pushcart Prize) is a bit of a doorstopper at over 450 pages, and there were times I thought it could have stood a little editing. Despite this, Henderson’s prose is gritty and mesmerizing as the story unspools into chaos. Pete is not terribly likable, and yet I found myself hoping he would sort out his problems and find a happy ending, not only for himself, but for the damaged people he is trying to help.

Henderson reveals the struggles of rural Americans including poverty, illegal drug use, homelessness, and broken families. Benjamin Pearl becomes symbolic of a modern America where fear of government intrusion and paranoia about losing freedom spirals into a madness that would be funny if it were not so terrifying.

Fourth of July Creek is a dark commentary on the problems facing our country. Pete Snows struggle to save the families of Tenmile, while losing the fight to save his own family, becomes a compelling story about one man’s quest to find meaning in a disconnected world.

Readers who enjoy novels set in the rural Pacific Northwest which are literary in style, will want to give this one a try. Smith Henderson is an author to watch.

Recommended. show less

“...the world is a blade and dread is hope cut open and spread inside out.”

Pete Snow is a social worker who rescues children from abusive and dysfunctional families in the hinterlands of Montana. He gets kids out of dangerous houses and tries to find better environments for them to live in. This is fairly heroic stuff and we are supposed to like him for it but his own family is a mess, he walked out on his wife and daughter when his wife cheated on him, his brother is on the run after show more beating up his parole officer and he's a misogynistic alcoholic who drinks himself into violence, punching out his own car windows on one occasion and a young client in the stomach on another.

When Pete encounters undernourished twelve year-old Benjamin Pearl, the son of a profoundly disturbed anti-government, apocalyptic, paranoid who reveres the Old Testament and whose delusions have driven him and his family to live in the wilderness, Pete must gradually try and gain Jeremiah���s trust. As Pete's own family spins out of control (his daughter runs away from home), Pearl's activities spark the interest of the federal agencies and puts Pete in to the middle of a massive manhunt.

The story is told with a third-person narrator which infuses the novel with an element of realism. There are some conversations but these are somewhat stage-managed but we can see Pete's smart-ass remarks as a way of dealing with the stresses of his job as he struggles to infuse a little decency into the lives of his clients.

With the probable exception of the paranoid Pearl none of the characters in this book are very likeable, this is particularly true of the women who are generally sluts and harpies. Most of the chapters focus on Pete but interspersed within the main plot there are short sections in which his daughter Rachel/ Rose chats with a mystery person, presumably the reader. Personally I don't feel that I really needed to read about the childhood sexual exploitation she faced as a runaway and felt that they were a distraction rather than adding to the main story. I also felt that it simply took too long for us to meet Jeremiah and would have liked to have seen him introduced earlier but on the whole I found this to be compulsive reading and I generally enjoyed it, Henderson does a good job of making Pete’s life complicated without confusing the reader and without giving away the ending I will sat that it doesn't end in a complete disaster. Social work is filled with bleakness as well as hope. show less