250 pages or less
Worthwhile reads to fit busy student schedules

-- Kristin Johnson, Literary Critic

November provides cold look at loss, but also springs hope anew.
Fiction
A Century of November
By: W.D. Wetherell
Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 164 pages, hardcover $24, October 2004.
First Thoughts: Wetherell spins well-crafted prose, placing the reader on the battlefield to view the chilling aftermath of war.

Charles Marden is a judge and apple grower in Vancouver. His only son is reported missing at the end of World War I. Grief-stricken, he sets out on a pilgrimage to find the exact spot where his son, Billy, died. But he soon learns he is not the only survivor his son has left behind. His journey turns into a quest where he remains one step behind Billy’s girlfriend, Elaine Reed. She is also seeking the truth about Billy’s last moments, but for different reasons. Elaine is pregnant, unwed, and now alone. But Marden is no stranger to being alone, having lost his wife to the Spanish Flu just three weeks earlier.

On Marden’s pilgrimage, he encounters several well-depicted characters who help him navigate the long journey to Belgium, many of whom are dealing with their own grief. One character says, “What does missing mean, actually mean? Is it missing like an ashtray goes missing, something that might turn up at any moment? Or is it missing like missing someone you love who’s temporarily away in the country? Missing? Why don’t they spell it out? Your husband is missing, which means he’s killed, only we don’t know where his body is so that’s what we’re going to call it.” These incidental characters Marden encounters spring up strong in voice and then disappear, letting him continue on his way.

The observations Marden makes on his journey are poignant and will make readers take pause of war in their own time. One passage reads, “He was used to considering death as something that happened to one person at a time, and now here, four thousand miles from the front line, was evidence of a different style of death, death all together, death en masse….”

Near the frontlines of the battlefield, Marden encounters leftover mines, muddy trenches and poisonous gasses that still cling to the air. In Marden, Wetherell shows us a man grappling with grief, but searching for hope, in a bleak place and a hopeless time.

Winner of the 2004 Michigan Literary Fiction Award, A Century of November seems to provide a hauntingly real insider’s view of the front lines, and the scars and the casualties of war. Poetic at times and beautifully detailed, the tone encapsulates those chilling realities.

In addition to A Century of November, Wetherell has published six previous books and has held the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the past five years.

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