Fourth of July Creek: A Novel Hardcover – May 27, 2014

"Fourth of July Creek" is about damaged people: eccentrics, alcoholics, addicts, hookers, felons in hiding, abused children, abusive parents, people living on the edge of society and sanity; political extremism; survivalists; political extremists; hope; love; anger; forgiveness; and the power of the mind and the body to continue on despite horrific circumstances. The novel's first few pages get a grip on you, and you won't be able to put it down. The main protagonist, Pete Snow, is a case worker for the State Division of Family Services in a small town in Montana called Tenmile. He lives in a "cabin" in the woods outside of town that lacks electricity and plumbing; a wood stove provides his heat. He stores his few fungibles in a root cellar. He lives in one room - the living room - as the bedroom is full of empty boxes. He occasionally has to patch the cabin up after it has been invaded by animals. Pete is a functioning alcoholic who is in many ways as damaged as the families he visits to determine if the children in the household are safe and adequately cared for. He is estranged from his strict, fundamentalist, possibly abusive father who is a successful and somewhat feared rancher in another part of the state. Pete is divorced from a wife who is also an alcoholic and cheated on him but ostensibly left him because of his alcoholism and the fact that he was a lousy husband and father. His teenage daughter won't speak to him. As the novel begins, his ex-wife and daughter are moving to Texas to live with a trucker Pete's ex-wife met and had a briefly hooked up with. His daughter's evolving situation is handled by means of interviews, an effective device, though the interviewer is never identified, if in fact there was one. His brother Luke is on the run after beating up his probation officer, and Pete's loyalty to his brother, despite his anger at Luke having stolen from him, puts Pete at risk.Tenmile is a breeding grounds for alcoholism and bad behavior. The town has more bars than diners, and which bar and whether you go to a bar or a diner depends on how drunk you are or want to be. All of Pete's friends and acquaintances are drunks. Alcohol is how Pete deals with his anger, sorrow, disappointment, and frustration. Alcohol fuels his determination. Amazingly, he is able to perform his job, which he does with compassion extraordinary dedication and determination. He has difficult decisions to make, weighing the "best interests of the child" and whether to leave the child in his or her current circumstances or remove the child from the home. He second guesses himself and one time goes over the line with one of his clients with almost catastrophic results for the child. He meets and enters into what for him is potentially a serious physical and emotional relationship with another social worker from Missoula who has some serious baggage of her own. Alcohol is a major part of this relationship.It is Pete's capacity for kindness and his devotion to his young clients despite his dysfunctional personal life that is remarkable. Just when you think things could not get any worse for him, they do. He reacts by getting drunk, and worse, but sleeps it off, gets back into his junker of a car, sometimes with physical injuries on top of his emotional ones and a fierce hangover, and sets out to find a child, or figure out a better place for a child to live. It is because of his kindness, devotion and brutal honesty about himself - that he is really one of them - that allows people to ultimately trust him.Henderson writes about all of this -the physical location of the action, from Montana to Wyoming to Oregon to Texas, in exquisite detail. You can feel the cold, the mud. You can hear those dogs attacking Pete. You can smell death. You can see the physical injuries to Pete and his clients. You know from contemporary media that Posse Comitatis, and individuals such as Jeremiah Pearl, who don't believe in the US monetary system, have gone off the grid, and reject the American political system, exist. Henderson captures their beliefs perfectly. This is not one of those books which strain credulity. Henderson occasionally employs language or invents words that are clever and appropriate for the situation. Some of the damage done to the children is shocking and awful. However, you will feel some compassion for the worst individuals, as things are not always what they initially seem.Events are not all neatly resolved by the end of the book but Pete, in his perserverance, has at least attempted to find solutions to some of the problems he has encountered. Most of all, there is hope. Maybe Pete will be able to find some peace for his turbulent lie. He is a good soul. Smith Henderson is an outstanding writer. This book will be in your head for awhile.

"Your caseload is brutal and will get worse as the holidays steadily advance on the poor, deranged, and demented."Debut novelist Henderson Smith has written a tale about rural America that is both bleak and suffused with a bone-dry wit. Most of us do not have any reason to deal with the Department of Family Services in our state, but in my job as a psychiatric pediatric RN in Austin, I have my fair share of in- and out-of-state hook-ups (on the phone, or they come to us). Here in the outback bergs of Montana, Pete Snow, Bachelor of Social Work (drop-out of the master's program) is the go-to person for the most extreme and sometimes most dangerous cases involving crises and sometimes threats to life. An alcoholic whose partying wife has left him and taken their teenage daughter, Pete has a pretty sorry excuse for a personal life, except for his loyalty to a few friends and the hard cases he works.In his work, Pete gets the job done. His tools are his clipboard and pen, and if the law shows up with a gun, he uses his wiles to disarm them. Usually. His clients are typically poverty-stricken and lawless, and dependent on the system that they resent; the children are the ones that Pete wants to help the most, the often innocent and vulnerable that are headed for a lifetime of institutional living. To his irresponsible wife, he has said, "I take kids away from people like us." His daughter has run away while in the care of his ex-, and now he is desperate to find her, while still invested in his work at home. In the meantime, he is shutting out his brother, an outlaw on the run. Snow's no hero--perhaps a flawed anti-hero. He should be more jaded than he is, but that is Snow's endearing quality--he just never gives up, on his daughter or his cases:"...these absences were twinned in Pete's mind as if the one could not be solved without the other, and he harbored the absurd hope that the revelation of the one would reveal the other."The two cases he struggles with are Cecil, a violent and sexually deviant son of an abusive parent, and a feral child named Benjamin, who lives in the wilderness with his anarchist, survivalist father, Jeremiah Pearl. Pearl is already a living legend, haven taken American coins and punched holes in the presidents' heads; the coins have made their way around pawnshops and collectors. Jeremiah spouts an extreme Christian dogma that may be dangerous to himself, his son, and the world at large, including Pete.It becomes evident that Pete Snow is compelled by his isolation and connection to the fringes of society. He lives in a primitive cabin (no electricity) in Tenmile, and showers at the courthouse. They put up with Snow's eccentricities and the way he pushes the envelope because his compassion and dedication is consummate and tireless.This is a sweeping tale about tough human questions, such as: what freedoms are compromised for assistance--for food, clothing, and essentials? What price do people pay to meet Maslow's lowest hierarchy of needs? Is it fair to force someone with crushing demons into a society that demonizes and crushes him even more? Can you effectively help others when your own life and family is falling apart? The big questions of sovereignty, safety, family, and the pursuit of, well, individual liberty, is well wrought and teeming with moral ambiguity.Smith Henderson knows his geographical areas. He is from Montana, and participated in the Michener Writer's program here in Austin, where part of the novel takes place. This confidently written, brutal, take-no-prisoners tale does not read like a debut novel. I know that Smith worked at a juvenile group home, a superb place to gather grit for this kind of story, to study the characters of children living outside of societal norms. It is well-plotted, focusing on character, but building to a nail-biting conclusion.

Pete Snow is a social worker for Family Services in Montana. It's the early 1980s & although living & working in a rural community (rather than urban sprawl) Pete's dealing with some seriously damaged clients. He's not only got problems at work but his personal life is in disarray & he's having trouble coming to terms with the breakup of his marriage & the fact he's estranged from his daughter.Whilst trying to help one Benjamin Pearl he comes face to face with the child's father Jeremiah - a bible bashing & paranoid survivalist - who is convinced that the end of days is nigh & that Pete is an agent of the devil. The book explores not just the Pearls' backstory but also Pete's. It raises several issues including mental health, poverty , community responsibility, life on the streets & ultimately examines the meaning of Freedom in the Land of the Free. For a debut it's a powerful read & I loved it.

Very well written novel

It was Just very long for the simple story held within, the realism certainly comes through from every angle however.

Interesting perspective

prompt delivery