Correcting the Landscape: A Novel

by Marjorie Kowalski Cole

Overview

The editor of a small weekly newspaper in Fairbanks, Alaska, Gus Traynor is an independent spirit whose idealism has survived numerous tests. When big business interests threaten the breathtaking wilderness he cherishes, he joins forces with his best friend—an often self-serving developer—to take on the forces of progress. Soon, in his determination to preserve the dignity and heritage of his community, Gus is learning more than he has ever imagined about the region's colorful mix of opportunists, dreamers, and artists. But his mission is complicated by the discovery of a young woman's body floating in the river . . . and by the blossoming of an unexpected love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060786076
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/26/2006
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Marjorie Kowalski Cole's poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Chattahoochee Review and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, American Poetry Review, and Poets & Writers. She lives in Ester, Alaska, with her husband, Pat Lambert.

Editorial Reviews

The publisher of a Fairbanks, Alaska, weekly newspaper finds himself tested by matters of love and money in Cole's resolute first novel. Gus Traynor has run the Mercury for 15 years, aided by his fiery sister, Noreen, but these days costs are up and ad sales are down. The paper's difficulties come at a bad time for Gus, a likable and sometimes reluctant gadfly who, after many years of bachelorhood, finds a new reason to fight for his paper's longevity: part-time journalist Gayle Kenneally, a single mother from the native village of Allakeket whose thoughtful, unhurried self-possession capture Gus's attention and ultimately his heart. In Gus, Cole has crafted a sympathetic, winning everyman with a believable mix of pragmatic and contemplative impulses. Cole's attention to an ongoing litany of town issues, on the other hand-the debate over a controversial book; a logging bill-never come alive, but read instead as a lackluster strategy to ratchet up tension. The novel's characters, and their tentative, fully felt interactions in the service of building friendships and love-especially Gus's nervous, endearing, faltering attempts to get closer to Gayle-are at the story's heart, and propel it forward with quiet force. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Confessions from a contemporary St. Augustine dominate Alaska native Cole's complex debut, which earned the 2004 Bellwether Prize. Protagonist Gus Traynor edits The Mercury with an eye toward raising the consciousness of Fairbanks, AK, residents. That goal becomes difficult after a series of controversial articles prompts advertisers to withdraw their support, which nudges the paper toward bankruptcy and sends Gus into an existential tailspin. Readers concerned with social justice will appreciate the struggling editor's polemics on censorship, race, and class, while others will relish Cole's skillfully executed passages describing a dazzling landscape repeatedly scarred by ecological crises. Most interesting, perhaps, are Gus's quirky friends and colleagues, who include an Irish expatriate poet and a good-natured land developer with a morbid fascination with heavy machinery. In fact, readers hoping to learn more about them might be somewhat disappointed by the novel's focus on Gus's personal growth. However, Cole's argument that "Readers need to read for what's left out," coupled with her heartfelt, insightful storytelling, more than justifies her use of the first-person limited perspective. Recommended for large public libraries and regional collections.-Leigh Anne Vrabel, Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This earnest debut novel, winner of the Bellwether Prize for "fiction of social responsibility," wavers along the fine line between the true-to-life and dull-as-ditchwater. Narrator-hero Gus Traynor, 50ish editor of an alternative newspaper in Fairbanks, Alaska, wrestles with ecological issues, the paper's dwindling circulation and imminent insolvency and his shy passion for a single mother from a native village. Cole's depiction of Alaska is not of the natural beauty viewed from cruise ships, but of a land menaced by clear-cutting and bad legislation, with a native population plagued by poverty and substance abuse. Traynor's humility and integrity make him a likable fellow, but he is given to embarrassing cliches-"the notion of running a newspaper took hold of me like a flower blooming in my soul"-and for the first three quarters of the novel, he simply putters around town. He watches a friend's New Age girlfriend carve an ice sculpture; he participates in a community drive to pick up trash. He hires an itinerant Irish poet, who "couldn't quite get the hope out of his face" to write features, that may in part explain the paper's insolvency. It is a work by this fictional poet, Felix Heaven, which gives the book its title. The poem-and Cole makes a fine job of it-describes the arrogant statues erected to honor various lords and conquerors, and celebrates the "necessary correction" of pulling them down. The work spurs Traynor and a land-developer friend to get tough with a "First Family" sculpture, described as "pointlessly huge," in a Fairbanks plaza. Cole's determination to withhold the easy pleasures of fiction, the drama of a driving plot, juicy relationships, happy endings-in favor ofworkaday inconclusiveness, and the unromantic problems of real life, is admirably mature. The trouble is that, having forsaken certain pleasures, Cole's work offers only the soberest and most intermittent glimmer of any other reward.

Kirkus Reviews