Visiting the "Garden of Last Days"

Andre Dubus III wrote the novel that would become the movie "House of Sand and Fog." If you have read the book or seen the movie you know it is a profoundly sad and depressing work. Yes, it is extraordinarily well done, but that doesn't lessen the powerful sadness and heartbreak that ends both book and movie. He manages to get into the heads of his characters in a way that leaves many writers, including yours truly, jealous and wishing they had that ability.

His latest book is called "The Garden of Last Days" and it's a book I picked up and read based on a strong recommendation from none other than Stephen King himself. King wrote that he was handed an early "galley" print of this book and was unable to put it down. On that basis alone I picked up this book.

Once again there is a pervasive sadness throughout the book. While the sadness and tragedy here, against the characters themselves, is not quite as intense as in "House of Sand and Fog" it is there throughout. These are lost people wandering in the world, talking and yet unable to communicate and constantly searching. They are searching for forgiveness and for something more than what they are.

At the center of the story is April, a gorgeous young single mother who has started working as a stripper to help keep her daughter, Frannie, alive and well and taken care of. She has learned how to separate herself from her work, creating the character of Spring, who is able to smile and dazzle the men who feed her money and then switching back to April once she gets home. She has a plan. She is only doing this job to save enough money to buy a house, or several houses, and then she will retire.

April lives in an apartment above the elderly widow Jean. Jean and April are both solitary people. April has no friends beyond Jean and Jean sits in her high-walled garden all day and doesn't know her neighbors. She immediately attaches herself to April's little girl, Frannie, and Frannie stays with Jean at night while her mother takes her clothes off for strange men. Jean has never had children of her own and her instincts for this girl are powerful.

Then we meet the people in April's alter-ego's world. We meet Lonnie, the small but strong bouncer who has a knack for spotting trouble and knocking out men with one punch. He seems born to knock people around, although inside he dreams of more. Functionally-illiterate, he listens to poetry on tape in his car and he longs for something more than just busting heads. He also has a fondness for April.

We meet AJ, the broken down construction worker who has recently been kicked out of his own house. He got a girl pregnant, did right by her and married her, and then built her a house. He is angry, upset with his lot in life and gets kicked out of the strip club, earning a broken wrist in the process, for getting too touchie-feelie with one of the strippers. Drunk, angry and hurt, he returns to the club.

Finally, there is Bassam. He is from the middle east, and he hides a terrible secret. He too has a fondness for April and, on this night, he will pay a lot of money for time alone with her in the Champagne Room. He is in the U.S. for purposes that become all too clear very fast.

The story centers around the night when April is forced to take little Frannie to work with her and you know that this is going to lead to bad things. Jean has had heart - palpitations and is supposed to be in the hospital. April is counting on the woman who is in charge of the dancers, Tina, to watch her little girl, but Tina is a busy woman with a club to run.

The books opens with a strange kind of dread. You know things are going to go wrong and you even suspect what that thing might be, but the build up that moment is gut-wrenching. Dubus manages to get inside the head of each of these characters. They are three-dimensional people, as if they are standing there in front of you relating their story to you. Even the ones you know have evil intent in their hearts he finds a way beneath their surface motivations and into the conflict raging in their hearts.

Although the exact date is never mentioned, you soon realize that this book takes place in 2001, in the month of September. In your head, the things we know about those who hijacked planes on that terrible day come together in your head. So, once the initial dreadful thing happens, you have the second dreadful thing building. The tension is relentless.

The story is haunting. It is also very sad. These are regular people, trying hard to get through life the best way they can, and making mistakes along the way. The consequences of those mistakes have an effect not only on their life, but on the lives of the rest of the country. The book goes from profoundly personal to completely universal in a heartbeat and never misses a step.

How Dubus manages to know these inner thoughts of his characters so well is amazing. That is a truly amazing and dazzling talent. He gives each of them equal weight and we find ourselves caring about all of them, no matter how terrible their goals actually are.

"The Garden of Last Days" is an excellent novel and a profound work of fiction, but is hardly light summer reading. This is a book that will stay with you a long time after you are finished reading it and it has the potential of becoming a modern classic.