‘Two Days Gone'
Author: Randall Silvis
Publisher: Source Books, 400 pages, $15.99
Sign up for one of our email newsletters.
Updated 2 hours ago
Ryan DeMarco isn't a typical protagonist. A fictional Pennsylvania State Trooper in Randall Silvis' new novel, “Two Days Gone,” DeMarco is cantankerous and profane, prone to drink and often at odds with his superiors. But he's also instinctively smart and determined to solve a horrific crime that rocks a small town in the northwest corner of the state.
“He comes from the same place all my characters come from,” says Silvis, “some cobwebbed alley in my imagination. I grew up in a small town and I find myself writing frequently about small-town characters or policemen, because those are the ones who I ran away from when I was a kid, and those are the ones I know best.”
Silvis, who lives in Mercer County and teaches at Edinboro University, is the author of numerous novels, including “One Night's Shore” and “Disquiet Heart,” fictionalized adventures of Edgar Allen Poe; and “Blood and Ink” and “Dead Man Falling,” crime novels.
“I started out as a literary writer,” says Silvis, who won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize in 1984 for “The Luckiest Man in the World.” “What I've always tried to do with my crime novels is bridge the gap between serious writing and what is called popular writing. So there's always that strong literary element of reflection and language and characterization in every one of my novels.”
The literary element in “Two Days Gone” comes by way of two elements: Silvis' spare and direct prose (his influences include Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Eudora Welty) and the main suspect. Thomas Huston is an English professor at a small college who is sought for the murders of his wife and three children. Huston, also a best-selling novelist, seems an unlikely candidate for the crime, but all the evidence points directly to him, especially when he disappears.
DeMarco's investigation of the crime is further muddled because he knows Huston: the writer tapped into the state trooper's expertise as background for a book.
One of the themes of the novel is the natural divide between college towns and the residents who live there full time.
“My dad was a steelworker and I grew up in a coal mining part of Clarion County,” Silvis says. “The working class is where my roots are, and having spent most of the last 30 years in and out of academia, I'm very aware of that dichotomy. I always find myself on the fringe, never really a member of academia, but a working class kid trying to make it there at the same time.”
One of strengths of “All Gone Now” is Silvis' evocation of the region. He writes about Lake Wilhelm and the wilderness that surrounds it, the small tight-knit communities in the area, and, of course, Erie.
Silvis says he became familiar with the region when he was a writer-in-residence at Mercyhurst University.
“It's a great little city with nice wide streets and artistic events,” Silvis says of Erie.
While Silvis takes great care to create a colorful backdrop, the novel is at heart a character study of two tortured men, DeMarco and Huston. DeMarco especially exhibits a quasi-Shakesperean sense of remorse that manifests itself in nightly bouts of reflection with alcohol.
“Most of my characters tend to be guilt ridden about something in their lives,” Silvis says, “and I think that's because I carry my own guilt with me for things that I wish I hadn't done. On one level I know you need to overcome that, you need to kick it to the curb, and at times I'm able to. Other times you wake up in the morning remembering those times and just cringe or cry. With my characters, I just sort of amplify all that so it becomes a much bigger part of the character.”
Rege Behe is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
