We don’t often review or recommend novels to you, but each year there are one or two exceptions.
William Langsfeld debut novel, Salvation, is about a rough man named Tom Horak who lives in the middle of nowhere — in a fictionalized town in rural western Colorado — where he does little but reflect on his life and the choices he has made. Most interesting is how he ponders whether or not to forgive people in his life — or himself.
There are four essential characters, the first of which is Tom, who in the opening scene strangles his best friend (the narrator refers to him also, in this scene, as his “former friend”) by wrapping his rifle around his neck. The scene is brutal but also, oddly, beautiful, and the rest of the novel follows suit. It ends with Tom stealing a snowmobile and fleeing not only the scene; as the narrator says, Tom “shouldered the rifle slantwise across his back and left the civilized world behind.”
Then there’s Marshal Tomlinson, who comes to investigate the murder. He’s introduced with a first-person voice, as in: “The call come in the early part of midmorning. Well, not a call, but Colton Westcliff come into the office. Come down by snowmobile from his cabin in the Elks.” Tomlinson is told of the crime that’s taken place; then, “Me and my first deputy … we went on up to check it out.”
Finally, Lutheran pastor Morris Green, when we first meet him, is staring at a crucifix on the church wall. A moment later, he’s asked to help a twelve-year-old boy, Gus, a sudden orphan left behind after the murder of his dad. Pastor Green at first says he’s not sure what to suggest, but then we see him think about it overnight and return in the morning to say that he’ll foster the boy himself, at least for a while.
The first conversation that Green and Gus have together is over dinner, and it’s about religion and faith. Green offers some spiritual generalities to Gus, including “God works in mysterious ways” and “You just have to have faith,” and Gus responds with, “I’m a baptized Catholic.” A moment later, Gus says, “My dad told me that since my godfather’s not Catholic that means I’m damned from the get-go.”
There’s a Cormac McCarthy quality to this novel by Langsfeld — with its brutality of violence and language, combined with questions of God and damnation, and a plot that demands to reveal itself. It is a powerful book, at once easy to read and yet troubling. But that’s okay: Salvation seems to be meant to trouble its readers, and we’re suggesting it’s well worth the trouble if you’d like to ponder the themes of guilt, forgiveness, and grace.
