BY BRIANDOYLE
Oregon State University Press, 2010. $18.95, 320 pages.
EVERY DAY BRINGS NEWS of brokenness — wars, feuds, murders, divorces, epidemics, betrayals, extinctions — and, not surprisingly, much art of our day mirrors that brokenness. Rarely, a contrary spirit, fully aware of the world’s wounds, chooses to celebrate healing. Brian Doyle has brought such a spirit to his essays and to his work as editor of Portland Magazine; now he dramatizes the work of healing in his first book of fiction, a rambunctious novel set in a small town on the Oregon coast.
Perched on the shifting boundary between land and sea, between realism and myth, the town of Neawanaka hosts some five hundred human souls who suffer a host of ills. A veteran has been traumatized by war,…
