Winslow in Love

It would be hard to imagine two more unlikely people to end up being in love with each other than Winslow and Erika, but they are, indeed, in some kind of love in Kevin Canty's Winslow in Love. Winslow is a poet whose life isn't working: his wife, June Leaf, is floating away from him; he hasn't written anything worthwhile for more than a year; he drinks and smokes too much; is fat and out of shape; depressed, morose--basically, a mess. Then, like a deus ex machina, deliverance of a sort appears. Winslow is offered a position teaching creative writing for a semester at a Montana University. (Canty teaches creative writing at the University of Montana.) Winslow is broke, stuck, and doesn't have a better idea, so he accepts the offer.

He and June drive to Montana together, but she leaves almost immediately, never to be heard from again. Winslow meets his students, all poet wannabes, and zeroes in on a pin-thin, tattooed girl half his age named Erika. She is bright, confrontational, and damaged. She drops into his office for Johnny Walker in a paper cup and Winslow quickly realizes that she is at least as troubled as he is. One of the other faculty members tells him that they are all worried about her: she is clearly starving herself to death and an alcoholic in the bargain. A perfect companion for Winslow in his current dark night of the soul.

In the hands of some novelists this would be just another dysfunctional relationship based on booze. Kevin Canty makes it gut-wrenchingly real, like the best of the blues, which Winslow loves and Erika can't stand. During a semester break, they take off in Winslow's Lincoln Town Car, the last relic of a past life and go south. Canty is a master at showing us the landscape, exterior and interior. Whether he is rhapsodizing about fly fishing--and these are the best lines about that since A River Runs Through It--or describing a hangover, a regret, a lost opportunity, he brings the moment to life: its beauty, ridiculousness, and poignancy. --Valerie Ryan