THE HAPPY VALLEY

In Harnett’s debut novel, a middle-aged man reflects on his adolescence while searching for his missing first love and the contentedness that has eluded him.

In the year 2033, the 52-year-old narrator’s old flame, June, contacts him and asks him to look after her cat. She then disappears—precisely as climate protests in the United States give way to a dissolution of government. As the nation is reborn in small pockets of local administration, the narrator returns to his hometown, Harmony Valley, in search not only of June, but of the simplicity of childhood. The unnamed narrator was 12 years old and June 15 when they first met at school. She pulled him into a half-real fantasy, shadowing the school janitor and uncovering the meeting room of a secret society—the L.E.F (“The Order of Friends of Liberty”). While the narrator lost interest and drifted into an unsatisfying life, June took the L.E.F. seriously. Around that time, Vietnamese lawyer Tiffany Ho joined the law firm of Jeremiah & Jeremiah, a generational enterprise that has long acted for one important client. How are June, Tiffany, and the L.E.F. connected? Sifting through his memories, can the narrator finally make sense of the past and seize hold of the happiness he let slip through his fingers? Harnett writes in the first person, crafting a wistful work that reflects both the uncertain child and the nostalgic adult. The prose grows wild and heavy with description, the narrator feeling his way and making no attempt to cut extraneous recollections or orientate the reader regarding the political upheaval. The tale is thus heavily immersive—and all the better for it (though readers who prefer clarity will appreciate the appended timeline of events). As is so often the way with memoir, the young narrator emerges more clearly than his older self. June is a force of nature, as enigmatic in later life as she was in school. Other characters come and go via well-drawn vignettes. The story must slowly be pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, and the sorting is perhaps more satisfying than the final picture. Nonetheless, there is plenty here to reward the reader’s commitment. Numerous full-page black-and-white illustrations accompany the text and recall the excitability of middle-grade stories.

A knotty, philosophical mystery dense with lingering regrets.