Mark Dunn's new novel, \Welcome to Higby,"" possesses an attractive charm composed of well-wrought characters out and about on a Labor Day weekend. Set in a small town in northern Mississippi, the book takes five very different people and lets them run into one another as the pages slip by. It is tightly woven and comes around to leave no main plot but the combination of the five, essentially being a book of five subplots.
Composed by letters and ingeniously rendered, ""Ella Minnow Pea,"" Dunn's previous work, set the bar for ""Welcome to Higby."" The previous pangrammatic riddle of the earlier book proved Dunn as an emerging writer whose brilliant wordplay must be noted with rapt attention. The expectations that ""Ella Minnow Pea"" created are difficult to match and are only closely approached by ""Welcome to Higby."" Though not an equal, Dunn's new book satisfies, nonetheless. Drawing together separate narratives presents a challenge that is imperfectly completed.
Stewie Kipp and Marci Luck wrestle with the state of their relationship now that Stewie claims to be committed to his Christian faith. The lonely Carmen Valentine and sleepless Euless Ludlam cannot come together because of continual second guesses and bad memories of former flings. The Reverend Oren Cullen must reconcile with the ghost of his deceased wife and his son Clint, who just survived a fall from the town's old water tower that dropped him in a neighbor's pool. Tula Gilmurray and her brother Hank undergo brittle emotional reckoning as Hank's mental condition slips. Meanwhile Talitha Leigh argues down a zealous cult bent on vegetables and cleanliness.
These plot lines, while seeming too different to come together, eventually do in a series of escapes, intersections and random re-pairings. There are plenty of ""I seen him at church"" and ""She works at the..."" to tie up these threads of stories. Before the book is out, every person undergoes their own sort of transformation, whether it is in the arms of another or by their own volition.
The book is one founded in a deep appreciation for the people and they end up filling in when the plot comes up a little short. While each person stands as a thoroughly believable character, that is sometimes not quite enough to carry the book. Because the book limits itself with very little progression of plot, Dunn relies heavily on the most intimate of character connections. The fault presents itself most glaringly when two characters have to wind up in bed to make something happen. Whenever the plot draws itself out, a convenient lover is there to mix things up.
While finding a balance between the competing threads of the story, Dunn's emphasis on each story occasionally leans one way or another for a little too long. The Stewie and Marci plot, easily the most engaging of the novel, disappears for far too long about two-thirds of the way through the book. Meanwhile, the Talitha and the cult story line eats up the pages even though it offers little in the way of Talitha's development. Despite these comparatively few mistakes, the book pulls through.
By the time the back cover turns over, the book has wound the reader through a delightful and entertaining jaunt through a small town. Dunn's style features amiable but realistic dialogue and just the right amount of small-town humility. By pushing characters to the front but occasionally fumbling the plot, ""Welcome to Higby"" slips but does not fall.
""Welcome to Higby"" is published by MacAdam/Cage.
