The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs

In Peery’s powerful new novel, Amicus, Kansas, a prairie town grown so helter-skelter that “it looked like it had been laid out by rival drunks,” reminds 88-year-old Hattie Campbell of her family: her husband, Abel, and their large brood—one long dead, the others struggling with addiction and incapable of sustaining long-term healthy relationships. The tendency toward shiftlessness in all but the oldest child (Doro, who lives respectably in Boston) is most pronounced in the youngest, Billy: middle-aged addict, long-time HIV sufferer, and “a showboat with flags and bunting unfurled.” Despite being a bit of a showboat himself, Abel cannot tolerate Billy’s flamboyance, not to mention “the way he went through money. And his froufrou French. And the way his mother doted on him,” so Hattie overcompensates, enabling Billy even more and doing her best to shield her irresponsible son from her husband. The story itself isn’t plot-heavy; rather, it moves forward in the nudges Peery gives her characters to reveal themselves, to interact and illuminate the dysfunction of their aging, dying family. This is a potent and memorable novel. (Sept.)