cover image THE SLOW AIR OF EWAN MACPHERSON

THE SLOW AIR OF EWAN MACPHERSON

Thomas Fox Averill, . . Blue Hen, $13 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-425-19081-4

Whiskey, bagpipes, haggis and Robert Burns: Averill plops Scottish institutions into the American heartland in this meandering coming-of-age tale. In 1952, Rob MacPherson and his infant son, Ewan, emigrate from Scotland to the very Scottish town of Glasgow, Kans., to realize Rob's dream of brewing a single-malt Scotch whiskey in America. The experiment fails horribly: the still explodes in 1963, killing a family friend and wounding Ewan. The remainder of the book is Ewan's story—his struggles with his father, his bagpipe playing and, primarily, his off-again, on-again romance with local girl Shirley Porter. After high school, the two "hand-fast," an old Celtic custom that amounts to a year-long trial marriage. Headstrong Shirley chafes at domesticity and betrays Ewan with his father before disappearing. In her absence, Ewan dates, drinks whiskey and spends a lot of time thinking about and playing his bagpipes (as does his father), which makes for tedious reading. Shirley eventually returns to Glasgow, where she and Ewan spar for long years over whether or not they should be a couple. Averill's second novel (after Secrets of Tsil Cafe) is filled with gloomy, stubborn people who seemingly expect to be unhappy and seldom disappoint themselves. Painful secrets are revealed very slowly, while the happy ending comes too suddenly for a book whose subject speaks primarily to the hardships of love. (July)