BURN

Two men on a hunting trip encounter a civil war.

Heller’s novel follows Jess and Storey, two friends in Maine, as their annual hunting trip turns calamitous. Early on, Heller references a bridge being out and a way forward blocked. The exact nature of the catastrophe isn’t revealed until partway through, though there are some hints. “All summer the entire state had been convulsed with secession mania,” Heller writes. He describes the situation Jess and Storey are in as being “in the wake of a rolling catastrophe,” with all the momentum that implies. The duo doesn’t encounter another living person until a significant part of the book has passed—and once they do, their situation becomes even more unsettling, as it seems they’re in a war zone with little sense of who’s fighting, and on what side. (The way this escalates allows for a rare moment of gallows humor when Storey says, “The helicopters suggest to me it’s not just a Maine thing.”) The two men find a girl, Collie, who’s become separated from her family, giving the second half a little more structure. Jess and Storey’s journey across an uncertain landscape is interspersed with Jess’ thoughts on his now-defunct marriage and his long friendship with Storey. Heller ably captures the white-knuckle momentum as the two men try to stay alive—bringing this book closer in tone to James Dickey’s WWII–era thriller To the White Sea than to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But that choice also makes the speculative elements feel disconnected from the story of the long friendship at this novel’s heart; it’s not hard to imagine much of the same action occurring in the wake of a natural disaster.

An ambitious story of survival that doesn’t always click, but is frequently thrilling.