Twenty-four years after war correspondent Daniel McLeod is killed in Vietnam, his only brother Cassidy is drawn by a mysterious phone call to their Wyoming hometown, where he must confront a lifetime of his own ghosts
A modern myth in an ancient landscapeIf ANGEL FIRE has a mythical resonance, it might be because it is deliberately plotted in the rhythms of stories we've told over and over again for millennia. We begin with a reluctant hero who is coaxed on a quest by a mentor, enters a special world unlike his own, evades pathway guardians and overcomes various obstacles to capture the magical "elixir" (a grail, perhaps, or a golden fleece). But then he must find his way back to his original world, with the elixir safe in hand, to make something good come from his adventure.
In a literary story such as ANGEL FIRE, that elixir might well be a realization that transforms our hero, more than a specific item. And so it is: Cassidy McLeod is transformed by the object of his quest - to explore his own inner demons and to discover what tragedy befell his beloved brother.
The primary myth reflected in ANGEL FIRE is Homer's Odyssey. Daniel and Cassidy McLeod can be seen as two halves of the wise and wily hero Odysseus, two incomplete souls who leave home to their separate wars - one real and one internal - and return after more than 20 years. As with Odysseus, the homecoming to their childhood house on Ithaca Street is not the end of their long journeys, but merely the beginning of the end.
Almost anybody who has lived in a very small town will recognize the archetypal elements of West Canaan, Wyoming: The water tower, the evening whistle, the cemetery, the colorful characters and stories. But in ANGEL FIRE, these also recall archetypal mythical symbols: The water tower is the lofty and eternal center of our young heroes' universe. The evening whistle literally sings the siren's song that draws Daniel home to his final struggle.
ANGEL FIRE draws its familiar rhythms from many sources: The Bible, mythology, frontier and Native American lore, and imagination. The book contains references to contemporary American legendary figures, from Cannibal Phil Gardner to John Wayne. And it introduces new stories with the patina of local myth: Moses ! the itinerant ball player, the false legends of Fakey Ducas, Flashlight Freddy Bascombe, the wandering gandy-dancer Pledger Moon, and the reluctant celebrity Jack Lazarus. Why? If contemporary philosopher Joseph Campbell was right - that myths endure because of familiar rhythms that transcend cultures and centuries - ANGEL FIRE should feel familiar to a reader, perhaps at a subconscious level. I think it gives the story a very complex subtext, without harming the beautiful simplicity of the story.
But ANGEL FIRE is more than warmed-over mythology. Upon reflection today, I think one of its hallmarks is landscape. The role of physical surroundings in forming Cassidy's and Daniel's characters is undeniable and immutable. I can't say this was planned, but it is entirely natural for a Westerner to feel a kind of umbilical connection to his surroundings, as if separating them might diminish both. In the same way that the South and its unique attitudes became background characters in the great Southern writers' stories, the new breed of Western writers can be defined by landscape. Of course, this all comes from a guy who once surmised in a college film-class thesis that "Cool Hand Luke" was simply a version of Luke's Gospel about the end of Jesus Christ's life. Perhaps the familiarity of these stories fools us into thinking they crop up more than they do, but I don't think so.
And maybe it doesn't matter. ANGEL FIRE's beauty is that it also tells a timely contemporary story all its own. Strip away the mythological subtext and ANGEL FIRE remains a haunting story about two brothers who have detoured around their personal pain for so long that they've become lost, and they must find their way back before they can be made whole again.
