March 30: What the Hellya Reading, John Smolens, "Quarantine," New Cartoon

He kept standing there.  He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn't get out of your light when you asked him to.  He'd do it, finally, but it took him a lot longer if you asked him to.  "What the hellya reading?" he said.

"Goddam book."

He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the name of it.  "Any good?" he said.

In the last couple of Rye posts, I keep returning to Ackley for some reason.  He's a relatively minor character, really, but he sort of stays with you.  I think it's because everybody knows a guy like Ackley.  A person whom nobody really likes that much.  He just sort of hangs around, buzzing in your ear like a persistent mosquito.  Ackley doesn't really care about the book Holden is reading.  He just wants Holden's attention.

If Ackley had been buzzing around me yesterday, he would have found me reading the latest novel from a friend and colleague of mine, John Smolens.  John's latest is titled Quarantine, and it's simply a great story.  It's set in the year 1796 in the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts.  A trading ship arrives in the harbor one night, bearing a crew that's afflicted by a mysterious fever.  Soon, the residents of Newburyport start dying at an alarming rate.  Giles Wiggins, one of the town's doctors, sets up a pest-house in the middle of town.  Throw in a preacher who believes the plague is the result of loose morals and sin, a mother scheming to kill her son, and a mysterious woman who may or may not be the daughter of French royalty, and you have the makings of a page-turning historical thriller.

John's prose is clean and precise.  His characters are complex and flawed.  The first time Giles appears, he's drunk and at first unwilling to treat the ailing sailors aboard the soon-to-be quarantined ship.  Miranda, his mother, holds court on her estate, abusing her servants and doing everything she can to control of her dissolute son.  Leander Hatch, one of the moral centers of Quarantine, navigates the minefields of the narrative as any nineteen-year-old boy would, full of confusion and anger and passion.

John's description of Newburyport in the throes of fevered panic is chilling:

They didn't speak again as they rattled along High Street toward the Mall.  When the smoke above the pest-house came into sight, they could hear voices--a large group of people stood outside the gates, singing "My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord."  By the time the last verse was finished, Leander and his father reached the Mall.  Reverend Cary, a stout man with thick side-whiskers, stood on a crate addressing the crowd.  He pointed at Leander's father and bellowed, "Come noooo closer with thy burden!"

In the tale of Newburyport is the ghost of the modern-day AIDS  hysteria, scientists squaring off against religious zealots, or the battle between capitalism and health care in the United States.  History repeats itself, and Smolens' cinematic writing connects past with present to provide a bleak warning about the future.

On this Holy Saturday, when light breaks through the darkness, John Smolens' Quarantine is a novel of Biblical ambiguity, where good people are afflicted with a black plague and the powerful and wealthy hold the keys to both damnation and salvation.

Yes, Ackley, Saint Marty has a goddam good book for you to read.  John Smolens' Quaratine.

Confessions of Saint Marty