Erin Flanagan's DEER SEASON

 

By Margaret S. Hamilton

 

During the Fall of 1985, sixteen-year-old Peggy Ahern disappears from the small Nebraska town of Gunthrum. In Deer Season, Erin Flanagan’s Edgar-winning literary crime novel, the search for Peggy is secondary to the effect of her disappearance on the residents.

 

The narrative is shared between Alma Costagan and her husband Clyle plus the viewpoint of Peggy’s twelve-year-old brother, Milo Ahern. Hal Bullard, an intellectually challenged young man who works as the Costagan’s farmhand, is the focus of their speculation: what happened to Peggy Ahern and was Hal responsible?

 

Instead of an investigator-driven plot, Flanagan uses emotional development to drive the book. Alma has miscarried five times and considers herself a failure. She gives up her city-based career as a social worker and supplements income from the farm by driving the local school bus. When Alma discovers her husband’s affair, she assumes the role of martyr. Alma adopts Hal as her own son, baking him treats and teaching him how to prepare simple meals and clean his house. She believes Hal to be kind, not a killer.

 

Clyle leaves his white-collar job to return to his family farm after his mother dies. When they first moved back to his hometown, Clyle pulled Alma into his high school circle of friends. By 1985, when Peggy disappears, Alma and Clyle have ditched the local drunken rec room parties for an isolated life on the farm. Clyle feels responsible for Hal and wants to believe he didn’t kill the missing high school student.

 

The third narrator, Milo, is a self-aware twelve-year-old starting junior high. As he broods over his sister’s fate, he puts together the puzzle pieces of her disappearance. Milo knows more than he realizes—in a memorable passage, he remembers Peggy “flirt whinnying” when an adult male neighbor touches her hair.

 

As the investigation into Peggy’s disappearance continues, tension comes from Hal’s inability to verbally express where he was and what he was doing the night Peggy disappeared. While Alma and Clyle stand by their farmhand, the townspeople, fueled by gossip and inuendo, focus on Hal as the likely suspect.

 

Flanagan’s narrative is almost journalistic in tone, not overly laden with excessive metaphors or descriptions. The dialogue rings true. Birth and death are frequently mentioned, commonplace on a farm, in an area where people hunt during deer season.

 

Alma is a fully drawn character with accurate insights. Early in the book, when she’s feeling frumpy, she describes a teenage girl: “Her eyes were ringed with black makeup, and her long, lean body looked like a knife blade in a pair of jeans.” (p.60) Later, Alma, in the throes of menopause, unwraps “the itchy scarf from her neck, peeled off her coat like it was full of fire ants, and opened the collar of her shirt as low as she dared.” (p.129) Alma describes Main Street in the late autumn, snow already on the ground. “In the bakery window fall-colored cookies shaped like leaves were resting against pumpkin pies.” (p.160) Flanagan uses precise details to convey setting and emotion.

 

Erin Flanagan’s Deer Season is a masterful study in understanding the emotional underpinnings of the residents of an isolated rural community and how the community responds to major crime. Eventually, the truth emerges. Alma and Clyle find a new sense of peace and purpose in their marriage.

 

Flanagan grew up in a small Nebraska town, and currently teaches at Wright State University in Dayton.

 

Readers and writers, do you enjoy crime novels set in isolated locales?