Pick Up Stick City

Semken writes, touchingly, in his preface that he wanted to publish a novel by 40, that he worked on this one eight years and that notification came "when I was thirty-nine years, three hundred and sixty two days old." This bizarre and mystical fable is touched throughout by that same sweetness. An unkempt, inscrutable loner named Harness Trenchold, independently wealthy from childhood, feels himself compelled to buy an Iowa ghost town, Siren Falls, for $1 million cash. In a short time, egglike objects begin arriving at the neighboring town's post office, addressed to Trenchold at Pick Up Stick City, Iowa (the rechristened Siren Falls), but postmarked scores of years previously. As Trenchold rebuilds the old, run-down buildings, he discovers more eggs and a curious pool of water. When placed in the pool, the eggs hatch, reanimating the town and moving Harness to resurrect the town's traditional Spiral Ring, a picnic/confessional that (he has learned) made the town and its people special. Funny, poignant and more than a bit whimsical, this allegorical tale of smalltown and environmental care is suffused with wonder. It doesn't really work as a novel, but it's an oddly engaging fable. (Nov.)