Letting Loose the Hounds

by Brady Udall
221 pgs

Before he wrote The Lonely Polygamist or The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint Brady Udall published this collection of short stories. The book contains 11 stories which take place in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and other western states. Most of them involve main characters who have experienced some significant loss in their lives, from death and divorce, to addiction and depression. But several of the stories take place after the loss has occurred, when they're at a pivotal moment in their journey back and are faced with the decision of which way the rest of their life is going to go.

There wasn't a story in the collection that I didn't enjoy, but my favorites were the title story and Midnight Raid. The first is about a man named Goody Yates, who is picked up while wandering deliriously along the side of the road immediately after having his wisdom teeth extracted by the dentist. The man takes him back to his own house while he tries to find out who he is and what's wrong with him. While Goody recuperates at the man's house, he learns that the man's wife recently left him for another man and that the man has plans to burn his house down before skipping town to start a new life. Goody also learns that the man has a couple dozen hunting dogs out back that haven't been fed for three days. You might be able to guess where that one's going.

Midnight Raid is about a Jerry, a tall Apache who is sneaking into a house carrying a pygmy goat in his arms. The home belongs to the man who married Jerry's ex-wife and it's where his young son now lives. His son has written to Jerry and told him how much he misses his pet goat and Jerry is determined to turn his life around and to be a better man and father . . . and the first thing he must do is give his son a goat.

Most of the stories have humorous undertones, some of them shine a light on the ridiculousness that can exist in peoples' lives, but all of them are enjoyable and are likely to strike an emotional chord.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall

It was Brady Udall's second book The Lonely Polygamist that I enjoyed reading so much that it made me decide to start this book blog. So needless to say, I had pretty high expectations for The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, his first book, when I found a second-hand copy and bought it a few months ago. This book proved to me that TLP wasn't a fluke, Udall is a great writer. His characters are extremely well developed. They're not your conventional hero-type characters - in fact, with this one, he gives us Edgar Mint, probably the anti-hero by most definitions today, but they're the type of characters that you can't help but pull for.

Edgar's life has been a series of tragedies. Edgar's mother Gloria was an Apache who lived on a reservation in Arizona. His father Arnold was a city slicker from Connecticut who who wanted to be a cowboy and came out West, became infatuated with Edgar's mother, and then was driven away by her mother when Gloria became pregnant with Edgar. Gloria, who had never touched a drop of alcohol before in her life, found that beer offered the only respite from the nauseousness that accompanied her pregnancy, and began drinking it on the first day Edgar started to develop inside her and didn't stop until she died a few years later.

When Edgar was seven, the mailman ran over him, crushing his skull and sending him into a coma for three months. When he woke up, his mother had abandoned him and his recovery, while miraculous, was not a complete one. It's not made clear in the book whether the things that make him socially inept and that make his story so compelling are direct results from his accident, or whether he would have grown up the same way even without it, but he's a different kind of kid.

The story Udall tells is a great one. It's funny at times, heartbreaking at others. It shines a light on the things that make us humans, both the good and the bad. And it shows how the life of one inconsequential person can have such a profound impact on the lives of those around him.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Are you supposed to christen a new blog?

I don't know what the proper ceremony or procedure is for beginning a blog. So I'll just begin. 

Awhile back my wife commented to me that I should start a blog about all the books I read. I don’t know what her motivation was in suggesting it. She’s always felt like I was a little obsessive about books. I love a good book. I get excited about discovering a new author I’ve never read and then I’ll spend years hunting down their previous books until I get them all. I believe that libraries are important, but I don’t check books out from them. Neither do I borrow them from friends or family. I have to own them. They must be in hardcover, preferably first editions, and more often than not these days, signed by the author. Obsessed? Whatever.

When I decided it was a good idea, I thought it would be too much work to try to go back and mention all of the great books I’ve read. If I tried to do that, I’d never get the motivation to get started. I figured I’d start writing about the books I read going forward starting today. However, having said that, I do want to mention a book that I read very recently that I thought was fantastic . . .

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Golden Richards is the patriarch of a polygamist family who’s going through a mid-life crisis of sorts. Having multiple wives is not all one would think it’s cracked up to be. There’s a lot of pressure on Golden to provide for all of his wives’ and children’s needs, and it's starting to take its toll on him. Golden is a general contractor and is finding it difficult to support his ever growing family financially and is forced to bid on a job building an extension to a brothel in Nevada. He gets the job but can’t reveal what it is to either his family or his church (of which he’s one of its leaders) for fear of being labeled a sinner and being cast out. The book is humourous throughout and pulls on your heart-strings at times. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★