Shades of Thorne Creek by Alan Havorka

Shades of Thorne Creek by Alan Havorka is a fascinating social novel following the fate of a small town population in the mid-1970s trying to survive in the midst of industrial decline, for a searing and emotive portrait. Havorka brings to life the provincial frustration against a period backdrop, teasing out the delicate personal relationships that define people and the paths they take, with sometimes tragic consequences.

Our unnamed narrator arrives in Emery, South Dakota, a perfectly normal if somewhat barren Great Plains town that has clearly seen better days, organized around a local grain elevator. Having noticed with a shiver the same date – August 8^th, 1974 – on a series of headstones, he asks around to find out what happened, and what unfolds is a portrait of a town on the eve of disaster, as the citizens of Emery, South Dakota push themselves along the path to tragedy.

Havorka’s writing is both emotional and precise, with digressions on subjects such as religion, industry, Watergate, and information technology feeling perfectly integrated and justified by the story, with the author never seeming to shoe-horn big ideas into the narrative. The characters are convincingly drawn with a sense of careful nuance, as no person is shown as perfectly good or bad, and though the dialogue sometimes lapses into cliché, each interaction has the ring of truth nonetheless.

A haunting novel of a vanishing world and the people left stranded by its loss, Shades of Thorne Creek is a beautifully written and acutely observed work of contemporary fiction.