Glen Larum’s literary debut, Waltz Against The Sky, is set at a crossroads in West Texas that first appears as a welcome nighttime oasis before dissolving into disappointment to reveal a town suspended in time.
Using the unique metaphor of intersecting highways, the author sets the theme in a terse prologue: “…major highways intersecting each other on the way to and from somewhere and nowhere. It is another of the intersections where people in motion pass each other, stop, rush by, or collide.”
As the novel’s title suggests, the protagonists “waltz against the sky”, moving from or toward something in a search for something better. All come to Indian Springs where the actions of Chief Deputy Matt Ridgeway and Sheriff Leo Blunt, following a strange episode with a local drunk, unwittingly serve as catalyst for the conflict and tension that follows.
You meet Evan Blaine, a young newspaperman leaving behind Montana and lost love, as he lands in this place and gets hired at the Dispatch. Del and Dink Downs are not only running from an act of patricide but, as only Del knows, traveling down the highway with a tire full of cocaine to deliver in California when they stop in Indian Springs in the wee hours of morning for gas. You come to know the happenstance hitchhiker, young Tony Angione, who escapes a murder attempt by the brothers only to land in jail on a bogus charge and then is forced to take part in an escape by his cellmate, Omero Valdez, a hard-wired sociopath who undertakes a harrowing escape using his fellow inmates as pawns.
While this may sound like a plot-driven thriller, Waltz Against the Sky is actually in all things written in literary accomplishment. Larum can quickly create a vision for the reader with a few choice words:
“…squatting at the edge of his boyhood hideout, a vague outline of a shadow hunched behind a dense curtain of brush and tall grass…”
“Early afternoon sunlight poured through the scattered canopies of huge trees in the yard and speckled the house’s sun-blotched siding.”
Throughout the novel, he graces the reader with the beauty of his brief but well drafted scene descriptions.
“I thought I would wander over to the employment office,” he said, wiping his finger on the folded tip of the napkin.”
“The motel had been a motor court when this two-lane highway was built to bypass the town’s main business district, its river rock facade and flashing vacancy neon sign inviting travelers to stop in a day when Indian Springs was famous for its springs and park…”
Glen Larum is a gifted writer with a wonderful talent that makes reading a pleasure and his Waltz Against The Sky will survive as a timeless novel that locks the readers’ attention in anticipation of what is to happen to each of its characters. They come to understand whom it is they are reading about –themselves.
We all search for something, and our paths take us to the highway intersections and crossroads of life. You turn left, and it’s a blessing. You turn right, and it’s a tragedy. One never knows what lies beyond the next turn. The author is right; we are all waltzing against the sky.
— Glen Aaron, best-selling author
Vice President, Permian Basin Bookies