A River Out of Eden
Like the Y2K apocalypse that never happened, this doomsday  thriller goes bust. Hockenberry, Dateline NBC correspondent and  author of Moving Violations (nominated for a National Book  Critics Circle award), tries to cram too many reportorial themes  into his bulging narrative: the displacement of Pacific  Northwest Chinook tribes, the questionable merits of salmon  hatcheries and federal dams, the dangers of nuclear power and  the threat posed by white supremacist fringe groups. There's a  plot buried under the mountain of issues, but it's actually more  of a highly convoluted premise. A Chinook warrior named Charley  Shen-oh-way, long assumed dead, has begun slaughtering employees  of a federal salmon hatchery to avenge the government's  appropriation of sacred Indian ground. His half-Chinook daughter  Francine, director of the hatchery, intuits Charley's  involvement in the savage murders and withholds incriminating  evidence, aided by her wildly improbable love interest, Duke  McCurdy, a white supremacist radio provocateur with a secret  heart of gold. Meanwhile, Jack Charnock, an unstable weapons  researcher who's at last perfected a portable implosion device,  has just been terminated from nearby Hanford Nuclear  Reservation, and isn't happy. These and other unsympathetic,  one-dimensional characters link up implausibly to announce the  novel's themes, even at the most intimate moments ("They have  always betrayed me, my mother's eyes," she whispered. "Hate  betrays me," Duke whispered back. "Who can escape his tribe?")  Even Francine's semicomatose white mother stays on point,  robotically intoning the Icelandic word for "big flood."  Hockenberry, a one-time radio reporter in the Pacific Northwest,  has enthusiastically researched the region, but this silly,  pretentious novel doesn't show off either writer or culture to  best advantage. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (May 17) Forecast: Hockenberry's first book, Moving Violations, was a  national bestseller, but as a memoir, its sales bounced high off  his fame as an NPR commentator and TV reporter who's also a  paraplegic. Some attention will accrue to his first novel  because of his continued media presence, and blurbs from Bill  McKibben and William Dietrich will draw in browsers, but when  all is said and done, he's not much of a thriller writer and,  ultimately, sales will reflect this.Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.