Life Between Wars

Patton, the grandson of General George S. Patton and author of The Pattons: A Personal History of an American Family, creates a fictional New England island as the stage for a crowded psychological drama of guilt, retribution and enlightenment. Penscot Island, a tourist hive in the summer, is the year-round home to a variety of frustrated souls. Vietnam veterans, fishermen, a maid, a would-be nun, kitchen help, a homosexual artist, two aged local gentry, a 14-year-old boy and a young girl from New York crisscross the narrative in varying degrees of distress, pursuing goals remarkable only for their ordinariness. With the exception of 14-year-old Brendan Cochran, the son of a tormented Vietnam vet, these are sad, stunted men and women motivated by stubborn belief in honor, God and love. Central to the plot are three acts of violence: one dates from the Vietnam War; the other two, which are impulsive random affairs, are present-day killings which propel the sequence of events. The story's energy comes from the clarity with which Patton shows people doing terrible things in the name of lofty but ultimately hollow ideals. Yet the sense of community these misfits are able to forge among themselves offers a bright spot in their lives. As a counterpoint to the morally clumsy adults stands Brendan, a child not yet sullied by commonplace sins of lust, pride and treachery. Patton writes piercing descriptions and displays a razor-sharp intelligence, but he hits the drums of irony a bit too hard, which nearly obscures the faint notes of compassion he too timidly sounds. (May) FYI: Life Between Wars will be published simultaneously with the first novel Patton completed, Up, Down & Sideways (see review below).