cover image The Wisest Man in America

The Wisest Man in America

W. D. Wetherell. University Press of New England, $30 (236pp) ISBN 978-0-87451-700-2

Two characters share the title role of this understated, resonantly thoughtful novel: Ferris, a New Hampshire lumberjack who has successfully predicted the winners of 11 straight presidential primaries, and Max, the newspaper columnist who discovered Ferris and made them both famous. Now, 42 years after the birth of their unusual friendship, the two appraise, through the lenses of their lives, the events of the 20th century, both large and small. Weighing on both men's minds, meanwhile, are their respective wives' deaths, which have, in both cases, loosed some unpleasant secrets, most notably Ferris's infidelity and his shooting of a man years earlier. Throughout, Wetherell (Chekhov's Sister) shifts points of view between his two protagonists. The sections concerning Max, told in the third person, are more distant, less realized than the first-person chapters about Ferris, a heartfelt individual who searches for wisdom in small things. In his column, Max writes, ``As Ferris goes, so goes the nation''; in this affecting novel, the connection between an ornery, struggling man and his country comes vividly to life. (Mar.)