SIX MILES TO ROADSIDE BUSINESS

The timelessness and stark beauty of the desert become the central element in a novel about a suicide by atomic bomb blast, a religious cult, a junkyard-turned-temporary sanctuary, and a spiritual quest threatening to destroy a family

After three years away, Vance Ravel ("rhymes with travel") returns to Roadside Business, his boyhood home in southwest Utah, to begin the final leg of his journey of atonement in this quirky, convincing examination of betrayal, guilt and innocence. Ravel's father, a Marine assigned to the atomic testing site in nearby Nevada, died under mysterious circumstances when Ravel was a boy. Years later, in the desert, Ravel became the center of a cult, called the Er, whose members sought wisdom from the son of "the man who walked into the light." But the Er's bizarre practices, unchecked by Ravel (whose fantasies about his father were fed by the Er's adulation), resulted in murder; Ravel's wife, Cassie, left with their young son; Ravel destroyed the settlement, earning the hatred of the sect's members. In concentrated musical prose, Doane ( The L e gends of Jesse Dark ) describes Ravel's patient efforts to establish a normal life in Roadside Business and win back doubtful Cassie. He alternates these scenes with flashbacks of Ravel's father's last days and still others involving one of the remaining Er, a simple young man whose ultimate redemption Ravel will share. Evocative of place, with humor and a cast of fully realized characters, Doane's provocative, hard-edged tale has a lasting afterglow.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ravel has been drifting for years, trying to mend his life, but now he's trudging back along a desert highway to the little town of Roadside Business. He has a lot of memories to face there: of a father who "walked into light," immolating himself in one of the army's many experimental atomic blasts; of the little community of hippie fanatics who gathered around him when they heard his father's story and turned ugly when he finally refused to lead them; and of his wife and child, who withdrew to safe ground as he became ever more entangled in the cult and have tired of waiting for him. Once home, he seeks to piece together his father's story and to win back his wife, while trying desperately to defuse the homicidal anger of a remaining cult member. If at times the story's pace is too leisurely, if the father's story does not always meld effectively with the son's, still, this is solid storytelling that celebrates the struggle to hold to small virtues in a crazy world.
-Barbara Hof fert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.