Pipers at the Gates of Dawn

Book excerpt: In the space of less than a year, three people in a small New England village make life-defining decisions. When a stranger moves into Harrow -- a stranger without a past and without a conscience -- old conflicts flare, threatening familiar foundations, and exposing possibilities of new ones. In the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio, Lynn Stegner takes the linked story form to new heights as she explores the interactions of circumstance and temperament in determining people's choices in the face of their unsettled issues. In "The Hired Man," Ray Rinaldi, a teenager running his alcoholic father's farm, agonizes over his family obligations and his opportunity to escape the stifling confines of Harrow. As spring arrives he hires a stranger, Sam Chase, to help with farm chores. Spring gives way to the arrival of summer residents in the title piece, "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn," in which Dru Hammond wrestles with her growing sense of disconnection from her husband and her concern over the disturbing behavior of her youngest son. In "Indian Summer," Jack Sayers, a fiercely independent former summer resident now settled in Harrow, tells his college-bound nephew the story of his itinerant life but leaves out something important. Stegner's acute and rich writing reveals, in profoundly original ways, the troubled fault-lines of the relationships that constitute each novella. What happens as Chase appears twice more links the novellas in unexpected and powerful ways, giving all three stories, their characters, and the town of Harrow itself a compelling unity that readers will recall long after the book is finished.