A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

If ever it could be said that a man had set his life on fire, that would be true of Henry Garrett, the protagonist of John Gregory Brown's bittersweet novel, A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. But over the course of this quietly seductive story, Brown (Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery) succeeds in transforming a character notable for "his peculiar proclivity for melancholy, his abysmally romantic attachment to sorrow" into a modest but appealing hero.

Henry's flight from New Orleans to the small town of Marimore, Va., in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is the culmination of more than a year of disastrous choices that include leaving his wife, purchasing an abandoned grocery store with the inheritance from his mother's estate and quitting his job as a high school English teacher. It's hard to imagine his life getting much worse--until, shortly after he arrives in Virginia, he accidentally kills a prison inmate, who steps into the path of Henry's car in hopes of securing a $5,000 death benefit for his impoverished family.

Brown patiently reveals what Henry calls his mind's "clatter and chaos, the clutter and noise, the wreck and ruin." It's not easy, at first, to live inside Henry's head as he seems to make little progress in keeping his demons at bay. But his realization that "a life could be changed by a story" provides the energy for the novel's second half. A Thousand Miles from Nowhere is a charming portrait of how redemption can appear in the most unlikely circumstances. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

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