Kona Stories hosts a fiction book club discussing “Fourth of July Creek” by Smith Henderson on Tuesday.
Kona Stories hosts a fiction book club discussing “Fourth of July Creek” by Smith Henderson on Tuesday.
The group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the store. Book groups are free if books are purchased at Kona Stories, or a $5 donation is requested.
The unforgettable hero of “Fourth of July Creek” is Pete Snow, a social worker charged with rescuing troubled children in the wilds of northern Montana. At work, he is preternaturally kind and helpful, even in the face of unbearable situations. In this rugged country, way off the grid, it seems there’s no horror he hasn’t seen, from “newly suicided fathers and their wreckage” to “the mother who calls your office wondering if you could take her child, God is telling her to kill him, you better hurry.”
Long before Henderson makes it explicit, it’s clear that to work for the Department of Family Services in a job like Snow’s is to grapple with every form of human frailty and to try to bring salvation rather than pass judgment. The book’s deeply persuasive message is “that all of life can be understood as casework.” And Snow serves as something of a secular priest.
Info: Brenda or Joy, 324-0350, www.konastories.com