Peter Heller’s 2019 novel, The River, was a fast-flowing tale with hidden depths and dark currents. Wynn and Jack, two best friends at Dartmouth who share a passion for the great outdoors, leave their studies behind one summer to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada. On their travels, they spot a forest fire: “The silence of it and the way it seemed to breathe scared them to the bone.” They also encounter a married couple arguing — then learn from the man the next day that his wife has disappeared. What should have been a fun expedition quickly becomes a fraught mission to evade a killer, look for a missing woman, and stay one step ahead of advancing flames, all while navigating a perilous waterway.
On the surface, Heller’s latest novel, Burn, has much in common with The River. Once again, he employs two male protagonists who are best friends, in this case, 37-year-olds who formed a close bond in childhood. They, too, venture out into the back of beyond, off the grid and the beaten track, where they discover a hostile environment. And as before, both men shelve their best-laid plans and embark on a frantic quest to stay alive.
This time around, however, Heller has taken more creative risks and produced a speculative work of fiction. It isn’t entirely new territory for him: His first novel, The Dog Stars (2012), offered a post-apocalyptic vision of a survivor of a devastating flu pandemic who is enticed out of the hangar he calls home by a glimmer of hope. Burn is another dystopian drama, but here, Heller’s focus is not the aftermath of a calamity but rather a calamity as it unfolds. Combining the inventiveness of his debut and the high-octane exploits of his other books, the novel makes for a compelling story about a friendship put to the test in a country under siege.
Heller’s two old buddies are Storey and Jess. They have met up in September for Jess’s favorite “annual ritual” — camping, hiking, and hunting moose in northern Maine. Storey has a wife and two daughters back in Vermont. Jess has no one waiting for him at home in Colorado: His wife walked out on him a year ago after his brief affair and constant trips away left her wondering “on what balance sheet marriage made sense”; the dog he inherited from her died two months later. This trip will give Jess the chance to forget about his woes and reunite with his friend in wide-open, secluded space, miles from the coast and the crowds.
But this year, the pair discover that their surroundings are different. They drive down desolate roads and come across bridges that have been deliberately destroyed. Lengthy detours cost them gas, and when they run out, they have no choice but to abandon their SUV and continue on foot. Entering towns and hamlets, they find buildings burned to the ground and, in the “sooted aisles” of the narrow streets, charred corpses and the husks of bombed-out cars. They pull the body of a pregnant woman with a rock in her shirt out of a lake. On the road, they follow “the detritus of the violently displaced” — single shoes, upturned strollers, smashed picture frames — until it peters out. No phone reception and no living soul around means no news and no answers.
Jess has an idea, though, about what has triggered this violence. All summer, Maine has been “convulsed with secession mania.” A couple of localized riots eventually escalated into “full-bore civil strife.” Desperate not to get caught in the crossfire, Jess and Storey weigh up their options and evaluate the safest route home. Driving is out, as there are no working vehicles to take, and sailing would render them sitting ducks. Instead, they walk, stopping only to rest and scavenge for food at marinas. But as they survey the scorched-earth damage, Storey is plagued by doubt as to whether they are walking away from danger or toward it.
They don’t have to wait long to find out. The hunters become the hunted. They are shot at by a father and son, and when Jess shoots back and kills them, he crosses a line. “We’re in it now,” he tells his friend. They certainly are, for shortly after, helicopters attack from above, forcing them to dive for cover and swim for their lives. But who is it that wants them dead — the U.S. Army, Maine militias, or another outfit with another agenda?
Just when the novel appears to be turning into a routine cat-and-mouse adventure involving hot pursuits and great escapes, Heller throws a welcome curveball that complicates his heroes’ plan of action and, as a result, increases the narrative tension. The men find a young girl called Collie hiding in a boat and promise her that they will take her to her parents. With this new purpose comes a huge responsibility, and soon Jess and Storey are proceeding warily across landscapes they don’t know in search of people they don’t trust.
Burn appears to come from the same mold as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: two figures traversing ravaged terrain, battling to survive, and trying to make sense of a cataclysmic disaster and breakdown in civilization. But there the comparisons end. McCarthy’s bleak new world was all the more terrifying for being peopled by “creedless shells of men” such as shrouded beggars and marauding cannibals. In contrast, Heller’s alternate reality is nearly deserted, which conveys not so much impending horror as prevailing eeriness. Also, unlike McCarthy, Heller is a compassionate writer, reluctant to inflict too much misery or brutality on his characters. This often works against him. There is a scene in which Jess notices Collie’s dead dog. Heller tells us that “the poor dog had been gut-shot and nearly torn in half.” “Poor” introduces a false note of sentimentality. Heller’s writing, here and elsewhere, would have more impact if he could kill his darlings without lessening the blow.
But this doesn’t mar what is a satisfying reading experience. Throughout, Heller impresses with his portrait of an enduring friendship. Sporadic flashbacks provide glimpses of the duo growing up in Vermont. Jess, who is given more page time, has two experiences that have a formative influence on his development: First, this only child of serious, reticent parents is taken under the wing of Storey’s livelier, friendlier parents; and second, at the age of 17, he plunges headlong into a heady, potent illicit romance. “It was a Long Island Iced Tea of love from which three sips could knock you flat,” explains Heller, “and so he had been shaken and intoxicated and euphoric.”
There is pathos as Jess, childless and wifeless, reflects on his many wrong turns and replays conversations with his dearly departed ex. There are thrills, particularly in the book’s final act. And, as ever, there is Heller’s engaging prose — at times tough and flinty, at others brightened with lyrical flourishes: “You are alone under the wheeling season, and the best memories are drained by loss.” Burn might not be the white-knuckle, white-water ride that The River was, but it has more than enough bold ideas and deft touches to lure us in and keep us rapt.
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Malcolm Forbes has written for the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He lives in Edinburgh.