Horn Island Dream: Worthy First Novel from Coastal Author

Review by Bruce Collier April 21, 2005 Issue

A 16-year-old Pascagoula boy spends a few weeks making new friends, learning about his deceased father, and getting a few clues about life. Horn Island Dream, Louisiana writer Wes Dannreuther’s first novel, is very much in the tradition of the classic Southern coming-of-age story. Dannreuther manages to cover most of the bases, while avoiding the poetic clichÈs and studied weirdness that sometimes afflict works in this genre.

For instance, you will not be treated to set pieces such as the hero’s First Encounter With Racism. Likewise don’t look for his Sexual Rite of Passage. There are no mysterious southern ladies lounging around in lingerie drinking bourbon before noon, though there is an old man doing this, fully clothed.

Instead, young Jimmy O’Connor is surprisingly normal. Not yet licensed to drive, he divides his time mainly between school and home, moving mostly on foot. Jimmy is an indifferent student, with a loving mother and stepfather. Mom and step dad are a little tight on the reins, but we learn that Jimmy’s past includes some unspecified trouble with a bad crowd, as well as time at a “boarding school.”

Both parents try to do their best, all the while maintaining a mysterious silence about Jimmy’s real father. The late Jack O’Connor was a local welder and artist. Jimmy sees samples of his father’s unique work in various places around town, and yearns to know more about him. Mom seems determined to keep a lid on it, and no one else in town is inclined to provide details. All Jimmy knows is that his dad was well liked and respected.

Jimmy’s life seems set to continue like this indefinitely, but for the intrusion of two other characters. One is Chris LeBlanc, a new student fresh from New Orleans. Chris and Jimmy hang out, ride around, and eventually make some exploratory visits to the barrier islands off the coast of Pascagoula.

The other is Clyde, a retired seaman and welder who Jimmy sees around town. When Jimmy decides to follow his father’s footsteps as a welder in the local shipyard, he goes to Clyde to learn the trade. Under the tutelage of the crusty old perfectionist, Jimmy discovers that Clyde knew his late father, and that Clyde seems to have a rather extensive collection of art. The old man answers some of the boy’s questions, but raises just as many more.

Finally, Jimmy gets a little help from beyond the grave in the form of a book, The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson, which Jimmy discovers one day while snooping through his mother’s closet. If there is such a thing as a coming-of-age book that does not have someone snooping through someone else’s closet, I have yet to read it.

Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965) was a real person, whose paintings and artwork are on display at the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Miss. Anderson frequently visited the barrier islands off the Mississippi and Alabama coasts in search of artistic inspiration. The Logs contain his thoughts on nature and the artist’s relationship to its order and form. Jimmy learns that his own father found similar inspiration in the islands and in the work of Anderson.

It would be spoiling the book to reveal the reason why Jimmy’s mother is keeping all this secret from her son, who Clyde really is, and so forth. What can be told is that Jimmy finds out on his own. Through trips to the islands with Chris, conversations with Clyde, and his own insights gained from reading Anderson’s book, Jimmy also discovers his own talents and purpose.

Dannreuther tells his story straightforwardly, with only the occasional lapse into vagueness or inconsistency. For example, time shifts could get a little confusing. I also found myself wondering why Jimmy sometimes refers to his mother as “mom,” and sometimes by her first name. While most writers express a character’s inner thoughts by saying “he thought,” Jimmy apparently talks out loud to himself. At first, I thought this was just inconsistency of writing. When one of the other characters asks Jimmy if he is talking to himself, I concluded that this was just part of Jimmy’s personality. You probably know people like that.

The characters’ dialogue rings mostly true. Dannreuther’s description of both ordinary and extraordinary scenes does the job with economy of effort. He follows Paddy Chayevsky’s rule of keeping the poetry and the wisdom to a minimum. Not many first-time novelists have this capacity to stand out of the way of their story, but Dannreuther does it. He lets Jimmy and his friends tell the story themselves, and it’s a story worth reading.

Horn Island Dream, IslandWriter Publishing, 272 pages, available at selected Barnes & Noble bookstores.

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