John Freeman

I wouldn't want to get lost in Tom Drury's Midwest. Shoved up along the northern border of Iowa, where the horizon is wide and desolate, it is not, as political commentators like to call it, the "heartland." You will find few soccer moms patrolling in their luxury SUVs and even fewer preppy teenagers decked out in Abercrombie & Fitch. Rather, the denizens here are rangy, weather-chapped silent types who keep guns in their glove boxes.

Since his tremendous 1994 debut, "The End of Vandalism," Drury has retreated further and further into the shadows of this region--leaving behind cozy eccentrics and the slightly folksy irony that might encourage you to think all will turn out well in the end. The latest way station in this fascinating artistic evolution is "The Driftless Area," a fast, mean, beautiful little book about a man and a woman who become linked through a cycle of revenge.

A bartender named Pierre Hunter hitchhikes out to California to visit some relatives. On his way there, a man tries to steal Pierre's bag from him. Pierre throws a rock at the fleeing deadbeat, magically hits him in the head and causes a wreck. When Pierre retrieves his bag from the smoldering pickup, he discovers $77,000 in cash tucked in the engine well. He takes that, too.

This is a bad idea, and it soon comes back to haunt him, as Pierre has taken from an unforgiving man. Drury begins to shuttle deftly between Pierre's mundane life and the bloodhound single-mindedness of his stalker. Soon enough, Pierre realizes he will not get away unscathed. "He wondered how it would end," Drury writes of Pierre. "On a hill. On sand, grass, soft wooden boards. Or in a house, with threadbare carpet and a candle guttering on the sideboard."

"The Driftless Area" is a book of hard, tangible surfaces, yet it is absolutely drenched in mystery. The title comes from a region of the upper Midwest that straddles several states. "It used to be said that the glaciers steered around the Driftless Area entirely," Drury writes, "but as Pierre understood the modern geological point of view, this was not accurate, though he liked to picture it was--to picture the glaciers lifting their blue foreheads, taking their bearings, and splitting up with an agreement to meet down the line."

In other words, it's a place where the impossible might just come to pass. Drury exploits this potential early in the book. Skating across some ice, Pierre falls through and nearly drowns. He is rescued by a beautiful woman who turns out to have had something to do with his past. She is also with the man who is coming to extract his money--or his revenge.

To believe some of these plots twists requires a suspension of disbelief. My hunch is most readers will grant Drury that favor. This book's tone and style are so elegantly somber it's as if Drury has foresworn embellishment. His carved, declarative sentences paw through the muck of what could have been said, moving us swiftly forward, always swiftly. Sentence-by-sentence, this kind of purposeful prose amasses a debt of trust and gratitude. It does not waste our time. It is not the kind of prose that would pull your leg. So when this book veers again toward the supernatural in its closing pages, it isn't strange or silly but deathly frightening. Death comes in a relentless fashion, this story reveals, and none of us will be able to hide from it, no matter how kind and good we've been during our lifetime. With great care and control, Tom Drury has invented a world where we just might be able to come back if we've been wronged.

"The Driftless Area"

By Tom Drury

Grove Atlantic, $22, 224 pages

(2006-08-22)

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