Angels Crest

by Leslie Schwartz Narrated by Susan Denaker

Overview

It only takes a moment for a life to change forever.

Ethan Denton is a lucky man. Most things have gone his way, and being granted full custody of Nate, his young son and “North Star,” has given him a near-perfect life. On a crisp winter morning just before the start of deer season, Ethan and Nate set off together to discover the beauties of the forest. As he parks the truck, Ethan spots a pair of magnificent bucks, and, eager to take a closer look, leaves Nate asleep in the car seat, a brief, impulsive decision any parent might make. When he returns only a few minutes later, the door of the truck is open and Nate is nowhere to be seen.

As an unexpected blizzard blankets the woods, Ethan searches for the missing three-year-old with the help of other townspeople: Ethan's ex-wife and his ex-best friend; an older Jewish judge, whose concern and involvement is colored by recent problems with his own son; a middle-aged lesbian couple; and others touched by the crisis. Nate's disappearance brings up past wounds for everyone, but also miraculously provides the chance for love and redemption as they struggle to make sense of the inexplicable.

ANGEL'S CREST is a beautifully wrought work, a seamless blend of dramatic suspense and emotional truth.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

A father pays the price for a brief moment of distraction in this histrionic lost child novel set in the mountains of California. Ethan Denton finally has everything he ever wanted. He's just won full custody of his three-year-old son, Nate, and they're living together in a tiny isolated town near a stunning peak called Angels Crest. That's where the two head one chilly morning at the crack of dawn, as part of Ethan's quest to "indoctrinate his son with the divinity of the forest." But Nate falls asleep in the truck, and Ethan makes the fateful decision to leave him for a moment while he follows the trail of two handsome bucks. By the time Ethan gets back, Nate has walked away in his footie pajamas and disappeared into the forest. Before long, nearly everyone in town is engaged in Ethan's parental nightmare, including Ethan's alcoholic ex-wife, Cindy ("with her wear-and-tear body"), lesbian couple Rocksan and Jane, ex-con woodsman Glick, diner waitress Angie and tormented Jewish judge Jack Rosenthal. Writing from seven separate points of view, Schwartz (Jumping the Green) lingeringly explores the different ways parents desert their children, and the aftereffects of their abandonment. She manages to keep the plot pounding forward, but hammers home her maudlin message relentlessly. Agent, Henry Dunow. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Feelings run riot as five parents reproach themselves for being bad mommies and daddies. Front and center is Ethan Denton, a young man in the small, unfashionable mountain town of Angels Crest, California. Ethan is euphoric: He has just gained full custody of his three-year-old son Nate after a bitter divorce from Cindy, his former high-school sweetheart and now a raging alcoholic. The story starts with Ethan driving Nate up the mountain to experience the majesty of Nature. Curiously, the normally dependable Ethan leaves Nate alone in his unlocked car and returns to find him missing. Nate will turn up dead in the snow and Ethan will spend the rest of the novel writhing in remorse. Cindy feels bad, too. Admittedly, this was not her screw-up, but hadn't she swigged vodka while suckling her baby? Other townspeople with bad family histories are Rocksan and Jane, long-time lesbian partners. Rocksan, the masculine one, has been angry since age six, when her father split; and Jane abandoned her baby, George, putting sexual desire before motherhood. The guilt has gnawed at her for 20 years. Now George shows up with his very pregnant girlfriend Melody, and Jane, passing up opportunities to drive the two to the hospital, calmly delivers the baby and wipes away her guilt. Then there's Rocksan's sister Angie, who runs the diner and can't forgive herself for rushing into a second marriage and alienating her daughter Rachel; she's making amends by raising Rachel's abandoned daughter Rosie. Finally, there's Judge Jack, a kindly old gent up from the city to help search for Nate. Ah, contrivance! Ethan will eventually wind up on Jack's docket, charged with criminal negligence, but Jack will treat himleniently, for he empathizes with Ethan; the judge has made his own mistakes in raising his son Marty, now an addict and a thief. An ineffectual tearjerker-and a disappointment after Schwartz's promising debut (Jumping the Green, 1999). Agent: Henry Dunow/Dunow & Carlson Literary Agency

From the Publisher

Compelling . . . precise, lyrical . . . truly moving.” —The Washington Post Book World“This beautiful, moving novel works brilliantly as a study of a tragedy and the various characters’ reactions to the tragedy itself, as well as how it causes them to reexamine their own lives.” —Booklist“A tender, closely-observed tale in which a tragedy in a small mountain town reverberates among its eccentric cast of residents. Each deeply wounded in his or her experience of life, they nevertheless form a community in which loss can be held and a future made possible. Leslie Schwartz writes with precision and grace."
—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171786120
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/14/2004
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Ethan



Ethan woke slowly. The metal scent of a storm in the air. His heart quickened at the marvel of his life. Me, he thought, and the word came and went like a flash of light.

He got out of bed and put on his jeans. On a pallet on the floor, Nate lay sleeping. Ethan stood for a moment and gazed at him. Since the day his son was born, Ethan had always thought of Nate as his North Star. Now, he bent down and pushed the hair back from Nate's forehead.

"C'mon buddy, time to go."

Nate stirred. Ethan didn't bother to change him out of his footie pajamas, he simply put a parka over him and picked him up. He knew, if need be, there was a pair of shoes in the truck.

"Balloon, daddy," Nate said, still half asleep.

Ethan bent down and picked up the now-deflated balloon from Nate's third birthday party the day before. Nate grabbed it and held onto it while Ethan shimmied into his coat, balancing Nate first in one arm, then the other. He was getting so big, almost too heavy to hold anymore.

Dawn was at least an hour away. It was cold but Ethan could feel the subtle warmth of the coming snowstorm. He knew by the fragrant scent in the air that the storm was close. It was early for snow—just the first of December—but Ethan could feel how it threatened, how monstrous it would be. He imagined the way the clouds had journeyed almost 400 miles from the coast along the jet stream, packing more and more power on their way here, to this place, on this day of his life.

He bundled his son into the car seat and started the truck, turning the heat on. As he pulled out of the driveway and drove down the dirt road to the main highway, Nate said, "Brother Powell says I need to go to church."

He said "brother" like "bruver." And the r was missing from "church." It killed Ethan, the way Nate talked, the things he came up with. Once he called a daddy longlegs a long-legged daddy and Ethan had to pick him up and hold him and kiss him after that.

Still, no matter how charmed, Ethan had to make an effort now to keep the asshole out of his voice. He never liked Brother Powell but he tried to make his tone smooth, without too much sentiment.

"We're going to church now, buddy."

"We're going to the woods, dad."

"Well a church doesn't have to have four walls and a door to be a church."

Ethan heard the edge in his voice. He wanted to go on but Nate had already lost interest and by the time they had driven a mile out of town toward the mountains, he had fallen back to sleep. Ethan drove up the winding, narrow roads, higher and higher. Darkness was giving way to a weak gloomy light. He thought of Nate at the Christian pre-school. He had no choice but to send him there. He would not lose the full custody he'd just won because he didn't like the church school mandated by the settlement. He didn't like church schools and things that were organized, like religion and politics. But Ethan chose his battles well. The woods could knock the Jesus out of anyone, if you went there enough. So that's what Ethan would do. Indoctrinate his son with the divinity of the forest.

Ethan wished the storm had waited another day. Or that hunting season really opened this morning. He knew, from years of hunting, that deer stuffed themselves with zeal before a storm. Though they were swift and intelligent animals, they were also lazy. Ethan had learned that they did not like to expend too much energy searching for food. That meant on a day like this, they'd be everywhere, eating along the game trails, gathering nervously in the valleys, seeking shelter against the cliff faces. Easy targets.

Eventually he made his way to the fire road that ended at the old Angels Crest trailhead. He loved this spot. He felt the anticipation inside him, like a tight wire holding him together. He wished he could hunt today, but he was not the sort to stoop to poaching. It went against his principles.

He let the engine idle and watched the forest. Very few people knew of this place. Very few people would undertake it. It was the hard way up to Angels Crest and Ethan knew that most hunters were too lazy and liked to drink too much to find the footing a place like this required. It was a beautiful spot, with woven carpets of arctic willow spreading out among the towering stands of pine and fir. In the distance, the tip of Angels Crest glowered above the clouds. He had never been up there in a storm. But he could well imagine the fury.

Almost immediately, he spotted a mature buck over the rise. He looked back at his son. This was what he had come here for, as he did almost every day, to show Nate the beauty of the woods, the wildlife, the sanctity of this place. But Nate was fast asleep. Ethan felt a twinge of regret but he didn't want to wake his boy. He turned back toward the woods and two more buck appeared over the ridge. He thought he would go have a quick look, track them for a minute. He promised himself he'd keep the truck in sight without venturing too far.

He turned off the engine, pocketed the keys and looked back at his son. Fast asleep. He looked out beyond him. The lure of the woods was like a drug to Ethan. He felt the sway and pull of the forest as if it touched him, tugged on his coat sleeve.

He quietly shut the door and headed into the forest. He left the gun in the truck. It was an ancient dual sighted 30-30 Savage he'd bought in Los Angeles at an army surplus store years before and restored and maintained. He knew there were better guns out there. But over the years, Ethan had grown used to the old Savage. He knew its rhythms and feel. It was a gun that rarely failed him.

The buck had gone upwind, into a narrow crag. Ethan walked a few feet and then stopped to look back at the truck. He could still see it, still see the outline of the car seat and Nate, his head forward in sleep. He told himself he'd go a little further and only for another minute. He wasn't a gambling man, especially when it came to Nate. But those buck were beauties. Mature trophy buck. They were food for the rest of the winter and an enviable rack for the garage wall.

He walked a ways longer and then, pausing, stopping, gambling, he followed the deer trail into a steep ravine where the vanished glaciers had left behind silver white rock surfaces, so polished and smooth that one day last spring, Ethan had watched as Nate licked the side of one. He remembered he hadn't stopped his son, only wished that he had thought to do it himself.

The deer themselves were out of sight but Ethan, who had trained himself to spot such things, knew that they would keep traveling in the same direction, into the wind. They would not venture into the open ground. They would stay under the cover of trees and close to canyon walls, hidden among the kalmia and cassiope.

Once more Ethan looked back. The truck was no longer visible but he knew it was not far. He told himself that just this once, he'd keep walking. Luck was with him. Hadn't he just won custody, full custody of his son? Hadn't most things gone his way in life? He figured that just this once, he could let his guard down. He'd walk just a few more feet along this old, now abandoned trailhead, savor the solitude, forget just for a brief moment all of his responsibility and pretend. I am free. Then he'd get back to the truck—Nate would probably still be asleep—and head into town to open the hardware store. Maybe on the way home, Nate would wake up and Ethan would tell him how beautiful the woods were, how fine and strong the deer. He would promise to take him out again later, because Ethan knew Nate would be disappointed to miss this morning sojourn.

The air felt tense. It would probably snow within the hour. He walked on, lured, as if to a woman, by the balm of his solitude. He thought aimlessly about his failed marriage, the custody battle he'd just won, but the cost at which it came. He thought about how pitiful it was that lately all his sexual pleasure had come from the labor of his hands, burrowing into the bed. A mattress, he thought, was a poor substitute for a woman. He thought about the hardware store. Taxes were due on the building, money was short. Why had he bought the place? He knew at the time he could barely afford it.

He walked on a few more feet and there before him, the buck stood majestically, partially hidden by a hedge of alpine goldenrod and the dry brown Indian summer grasses. The animals were so beautiful, so regal. He felt strangely joyous and relieved.

But then, as if coming to his senses after a long, slow dream, he looked at his watch and felt a shock. Fifteen minutes had passed. He couldn't believe it. How had he traveled this far for this long? What the hell had he been thinking? He felt a quickening and a tightening inside. Fifteen minutes at that pace meant he'd walked at least a mile into the woods. And then he thought of all the things he'd failed to think of before. He'd left the truck unlocked. Nate knew how to wiggle out of the car seat. He hadn't dressed him very warmly, hadn't even bothered to put on his shoes. Ethan knew in that surreal, certain way you did sometimes, that he'd made a terrible mistake by letting the truck disappear from his view. Later, he would not be able to explain the certainty of his intuition, how clearly he knew he had gambled and lost.

He rushed quickly through the woods, not wanting to run because he was afraid to give into the fear. He lost the scents of the woods, the earth smells, the smell of iron in the brewing storm. The world around him passed by in a blur. There were no longer distinct trees with buck rub or bear claw. Instead there were a flurry of trees. Cartoon trees in a cartoon forest. He thought of Nate. His most beautiful son, his North Star. Nate, who he'd finally, finally won for himself.

By the time he reached the clearing where he'd parked the car, the snow had started to fall and Ethan saw, as he knew he would, that the door to the truck was open. His heart went to his throat. His head burst into pain, sharp and blinding. He felt himself splitting apart, everything about him tearing wide open.

"Nate," he yelled. "Nate."

There was no answer. Ethan raced to the truck. Nate was gone, taking the deflated balloon and vanishing into the woods.

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