NOTHING DISAPPEARS

An able if passionless debut offers manners of standard small-town southern fiction—even as the author switches to the small New England town of Strawberry Landing, where a cozy mix of family, history, and unavenged wrongs bump and jiggle together to contrive a moderately diverting tale.

Charles narrates, returning home to Strawberry Landing after some seven years on the road as a travelling magician. His older brother Kevin, for whom everything is life has come easily, has recently been elected mayor and is—bafflingly—engaged to beautiful Emily. Given that Charles fled town those years ago after the death of his childhood friend Gracie, his return offers the chance to make peace with his past—and settle some scores. The first is with Kevin, a big-shouldered cheeseball who stole Gracie’s heart away, impregnated her, then left the aggrieved girl behind. After Gracie’s suicide, Charles was unable to face anyone any longer and hit on the traveling magician idea. Home again, he discovers that Kevin has some nefarious plans to improve the town, among them thieving away old man Hugh’s ancient shipbuilding factory and converting it into a public park. Charles, already with a chip on his shoulder as wide as Main Street, immediately begins uncovering the plot, in the meantime winning Emily’s heart. Along the way, he finds a sassy bartender/bed partner named Wendy, who does little here except perform incidental erotic gymnastics. Though Charles’s voice is apparently intended to show him ironic and bittersweet about his hometown and family, his broad swaths of smarm and attitude grow tiresome, and the sexual interludes are remarkably passionless, as if gotten through with a grim sort of plot duty.

An overlong yet potentially interesting, albeit modest, tale: like a parody of an overwritten Scooby Doo episode as the evil mayor’s plans are foiled by a resourceful outsider, who eventually gets the girl.