Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

If you read Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick you know that he writes very sinister fiction---Reliable was a debut novel and a tough act to follow.  However, Heading Out to Wonderful is just as compelling and equally dark. 

 
Charlie Beale arrives in Brownsburg with two suitcases---one full of knives ,the other full of cash.  We do not get any back story to why or how he accumulated the cash.  But he soon gets a job and he is the best butcher ever---so we know why he has the knives.  He soon falls in love with the wife of the richest man in town, Boaty’s wife Sylvan Glass---Sylvan was not her birth name but we are never told that as it would be according to her, unbelievable.  Many questions are never answered:  Where did Charlie come from?  What is his background?  What about family and why did he take a five year old for his meetings with Sylvan?  Charlie also has a problem being contained in a house and prefers sleeping on the ground by his river land. 


In spite of unanswered questions and unreasonable behaviors this is a great read---unputdownable.
~Maggie


Request Heading Out to Wonderful from the Bangor Public Library