Books: The Bright Lands By John Fram (2020)

 

“The town of Bentley holds two things dear: its football, and its secrets. But when star quarterback Dylan Whitley goes missing, an unremitting fear grips this remote corner of Texas. Joel Whitley was shamed out of conservative Bentley ten years ago, and while he’s finally made a life for himself as a gay man in New York, his younger brother’s disappearance soon brings him back to a place he thought he’d escaped for good. Meanwhile, Sheriff’s Deputy Starsha Clark stayed in Bentley; Joel’s return brings back painful memories—not to mention questions—about her own missing brother. And in the high school hallways, Dylan’s friends begin to suspect that their classmates know far more than they’re telling the police. Together, these unlikely allies will stir up secrets their town has long tried to ignore, drawing the attention of dangerous men who will stop at nothing to see that their crimes stay buried. But no one is quite prepared to face the darkness that’s begun to haunt their nightmares, whispering about a place long thought to be nothing but an urban legend: an empty night, a flicker of light on the horizon.”

While I enjoyed the book, it never becomes clear which genre author John Fram was trying emulate. It’s a mix of Stephen King’s IT, with Gothic tropes of Twin Peaks, and Friday Night Lights. But it adds a murder mystery as well and these mixtures create some weird juxtapositions. It also relies on stereotypes these small town thrillers seemly always have: gun happy southerners, mean girls, and a sense that everyone living in under a veil of ether and ignorance of what it’s men folk are doing. The book also uses closeted and promiscuous gay men to point where you wonder, just as the deputy Clark does several time, how many gay men live in Pettis County, Texas (though some appear at least bisexual or just straight dudes who get-off on having other men –some underage- get them off). Still, while the age of consent in Texas may be 17, no one calls out the pedophilia and that could leave a bad taste with the reader.

The ending is a bit muddled and along with some excessive detail, a grab bag of too many characters, the paranormal subplot sort of gets lost in the detail. So was it a murder mystery or was it about an area just outside an obscure small town in middle of nowhere Texas, haunted by some monster who seemly only existed to taste the blood and fear of teenage boys shamed by their sexuality?

As murder mystery, the book works until it doesn’t. As supernatural tale, well, I had hopes for a better explanation. Still, in some ways, it’s a fairly well-written tale for a debut novel. It was overlong and could’ve used a better editor, but I also kind of liked the idea. It’s provocative and bound to cause some discussions on whether Fram went  a bit too far never calling out the more questionable antics of town that uses teenage boys as sexual batteries to keep whatever lives underground happy.

Still, nice having a gay hero.