Bearskin – James A. McLaughlin (2018)
James McLaughlin’s debut novel, Bearskin, is as much about the mountains, forests and weather of southwestern Virginia as it is about rural violence, Mexican drug cartels, and the dogged resilience of its characters.
It is a suspense novel or thriller – the distinction is not entirely clear to me – that moves fast, especially in the second half. Our protagonist, Rice Moore, is a self-sufficient outdoorsman with just enough college science to land a job as caretaker of a privately-owned mountain preserve of Appalachian old growth forest in southwestern Virginia. Rice has arrived from Arizona as a man in trouble, with a new name, Rick Morton, and an undisclosed past that he is trying to outrun. His job as a caretaker is to make scientific observations of fauna and animals, and to keep trespassers and loggers out of the lands.
In the course of three or four months or so Rice gets into so many fights and receives so many haymaker shots to the face and body that it’s like a thriller movie in which the combatants land dozens of blows, any one of which would have knocked out even Joe Frazier.
The novel opens (no spoiler here) with a great scene in which two cartel assassins arrive in Rice’s cell on his first night in a Mexican prison. Rice has anticipated this, and waits on his prison bed hiding a heavy pipe. Rice surprises them and in a quick fight knocks both unconscious. Rice’s laconic Mexican (cartel) cellmate advises Rice to slice the Achilles tendons of the men, rather than kill them.
McLaughlin gives us short flashbacks of the prior troubles that has driven Rice east under a new name. But, it is quite clear from the outset the Rice expects someone from his past to try to find him, so many of Rice’s tactics consist of trying to live off the grid in the Virginian preserve.
While keeping his low profile, Rice learns that local black bears are being poached on his lands. The poachers attract the bears with bait hanging from branches and then kill the bears at close range with poisoned crossbow arrows. Apparently, there is a huge Asian demand for wild bear galls and paws, so the poachers extract the gall, cut off the paws, and leave the remainder of the bear to rot.
This nice novel has many believable twists and turns, but probably the least likely plot pivot is when Rice decides to single-handedly investigate and stop the poaching. He doesn’t want to report the poaching to the local sheriff or game warden for fear that his identity will be exposed in an investigation.
As should be obvious, however, Rice sticks out by merely going into town. The lands have been a private reserve for over 100 years, owned by a rich non-Virginian family, and the local people have long resented being treated as outsiders to these local lands. In that small town, everyone knows and instinctively resents whoever the caretaker is at any given time. Rice compounds his notoriety by visiting local bars and stores to seek out information about poaching. It doesn’t take long for him to get into fights with local toughs and bear hunters. It is seemingly strange behavior for a man seeking to avoid attention. Rice is a man of personal honor, however, and he takes the duties of caretaker of protected lands seriously.
The protected lands coalesce into a character of their own. Rice is a keen observer of weather and nature, and we are treated throughout the novel to beautiful descriptions of the heat and humidity of Virginia in August, the hints of cooler clean air in the fall, and the approach of a late fall tropical storm making its way up the mid-Atlantic. McLaughlin brings home the cacophony of late summer sounds of crickets, cicadas, katydids and tree frogs. His descriptions of a wild honeybee hive, of wayward hunting dogs, of copperhead and rattlesnakes are as engaging as the humans fighting each other.
McLaughlin grew up this region of Virginia, and he casts an observant, appreciative eye to the ways of the mountains – as well as to the rhythm of this local, poor, proud rural population.
There are two women in Rice’s life, one a girlfriend tangled in the past of Mexico, and the other the prior gamekeeper of the lands. Rice has a strong sense of justice, and some of the twists in plot that put Rice in danger arise out of his commitment to right the wrongs the women have experienced.
Rice ruefully puts himself in harms way many times over in his commitment to his gamekeeper job and to the women he knows. But, it is a fast and furious suspense, rolling to an end that leaves the reader satisfied and wanting more.
Bob Fall 