Ordinary Monsters Book

A mother's search for her lost son leads her to a most unusual, almost mythical California desert town. Nestled in a hidden valley, Lágrimas is the last stop for a host of eccentric and questionable souls. When Joyce arrives looking for her son on a tip from a hitchhiker who claims to have seen him there, she settles in a bit too quickly for the locals' comfort. Much to her crushing disappointment, the boy she's been led to is not her son, but an emotionally battered teenager who communicates solely through lines from The Tempest. The locals, suspicious of Joyce's intent, believe that she has brought with her the forces of the Owl, a devastating storm that threatens to demolish Lágrimas once every decade. Like a storm, the histories of Joyce and all of Lágrimas' inhabitants come raining down over the course of this riveting novel. Emotionally wrought and ultimately redeeming, Ordinary Monsters is a remarkable story about the sorrow of loss and the gift of healing.

Publishers Weekly

Those who miss watching the TV movie-of-the-week may find comfort in Novak's second novel (after Five Mile House), a melodramatic but earnest story about a desperate mother in search of her missing son. Joyce, a Vermont wife, is distraught when her 17-year-old son and his girlfriend run away. One evening, she empties her savings accounts, abandons her husband and heads west, toting photos of her son and his girlfriend. On a tip from a hitchhiker, she aims for Lygrimas, a dead-end California town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. There she meets young Danny, a lost soul who has been taken in by the locals. Danny, quite implausibly, communicates only in sections of dialogue from Shakespeare's The Tempest; out of a desire to mother him, or simply because she lacks any other options, Joyce buys the town's only bar, the Hoodoo, and waits for her son to turn up. She finds solace in the people of Lygrimas, perhaps because they are as desperate and worn-out as she is, though many remain suspicious of her. There's Duncan, Danny's primary caretaker and roughneck owner of a scrap yard; TJ, the Hoodoo's cheery waitress; and a group of hard-drinking regulars who are a quirky, more depressed version of the gang from Cheers. It's no secret that all the elements - from the oddball Lygrimas residents to the angelic Danny - are all carefully positioned to push Joyce down the path to redemption. A burgeoning romance with Duncan and a subplot concerning a murder at the scrap yard fail to generate sparks, but Joyce's overwhelming sense of loss is ably communicated. (June 5) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.