cover image Kinsella's Man

Kinsella's Man

Richard Stookey. University of Nevada Press, $25 (383pp) ISBN 978-0-87417-248-5

Set in Nevada from the early 1930s through 1965, Stookey's second novel (after A Still and Woven Blue), a quietly powerful tale of love and obsession, centers on brooding, stubborn, wealthy retired cattle rancher Cyril Kinsella, a recluse trapped in his past. Kinsella's pregnant first wife, Abigail, deserted him in 1931 after their wedding, and his second wife, delicate, ephemeral Margaret Devereaux, died in childbirth in 1947, two years into their marriage. Plunged into bitterness, grief and rage, Kinsella has retreated into the great stone house he built for Abigail. This stern, insomniac patriarch, overprotective of his daughter, Deirdre, pours out his reminiscences to his black foreman, Booker Goodman, and, after Goodman quits, to a young Basque sheepherder, John Siloa. The unexpected arrival of Kinsella's son by Abigail, Martin, an ex-priest whose existence the old man has refused to acknowledge, forces Kinsella to confront his mistakes. Meanwhile, Siloa's simmering attraction toward Kinsella's teenaged daughter (more than 20 years his junior) and his friendship with his boss's former mistress, also Margaret's aunt, complicate the plot. This affecting domestic tragedy is played out against a Nevada of deserts and bubbling springs, glowing red sunsets and majestic mountains, all impressively evoked by the author's finely crafted prose. (Nov.)