The setting of “Let Him Go” may be familiar to fans of Larry Watson — the small towns of North Dakota and Montana early in the 1950s. But “Let Him Go” seems a more harrowing and more violent story than this novelist of the Plains and Midwest has delivered in the past, a tale of the tests of familial love and of how loss can motivate us to push our boundaries, even when — or especially when — we know better. Told with Watson’s understated, precise prose, “Let Him Go” is gripping throughout and will hold readers enthralled through its ending.
George Blackledge is a retired sheriff. His wife, Margaret, is a woman Watson describes as being “steady as steel” but for the small yet noticeable tremor that causes her head and hands to shake. Their long marriage is strained by the loss of their son, who died when he was thrown by a horse.
That loss has led to another, and it is that additional loss that drives the story. Lorna, the widow of George and Margaret’s son, has left North Dakota with their grandson, Jimmy, and taken up with Donnie Weboy and his family, a tough, low-rent clan led by matriarch Blanche Weboy. Together, the Weboys live outside the town of Bentrock, Mont., on a ranch lit by kerosene because Blanche is too cheap and too tough to pay for the electricity. Margaret is determined to go to Bentrock to get her grandson; George reluctantly accompanies his wife.
The land, as Watson describes it, gives up little to those who travel across it. The people of North Dakota and Montana are stoic, as if made so by an often harsh landscape. George soon becomes a guide for the couple, his years as a small-town sheriff, although he is now retired, helpful as he and Margaret make their way to Bentrock and try to get a bead on Lorna and the Weboys.
The Weboys, as you might expect, are reluctant to part with Jimmy, though it is evident that he is more pawn to them than loved one. Lorna, on the other hand, is less than determined to stay with Donnie and his family. As the Blackledges — especially Margaret — press their case with the Weboys, hoping that the family will do what is best for Jimmy and hand him over, it soon becomes clear that this conflict will only deepen.
That it will turn violent is evident when Margaret holds Jimmy for the first time since Lorna took him away and, as Margaret breathes in “the child’s essence,” Blanche brusquely orders him up to bed when he rejects her offer of a pork chop. “Margaret backs up a few steps and tightens her hold on her grandson,” Watson writes. “Her eyes are open now, darting from one Weboy to another before settling coldly on Blanche.”
As the tension quickly builds, Watson’s language becomes more taut, as if to caution the reader. “Then only the kerosene lamp’s flame wavers,” Watson adds. “The room and its occupants are as still as a photograph, Weboys and Blackledges caught in a pose of wary readiness.”
It is, in a way, the portrait of a shoot-out in the moments before the guns start firing. But Watson ratchets up the tension as he continues to plumb the characters of George and Margaret, uncovering the conflicts between them and, in the end, the ties that bind them so fiercely.
“Let Him Go” is a wonderful novel and a fine addition to Watson’s work, right there with the early “Montana 1948” and his more recent “American Boy.” For all its violence and portents of violence, as well as a number of surprising plot turns, “Let Him Go” is at its heart a character study, not only of George and Margaret but also its other characters, all of whom are brought to life in prose that is both restrained and exquisite.
Steve Mills is a baiduhai reporter.
“Let Him Go”
By Larry Watson, Milkweed, 282 pages, $24