The Painter
A novel by Peter Heller
Heller’s first book, The Dog Stars was a bestselling debut novel, and when he set out to write The Painter he was hoping to avoid the sophomore jinx. He has managed this, and then some. The Painter begins with a bang, literally.
Jim Stegner is in a bar and has just shot another man in the face for making lewd comments about his daughter. The man survives, but Jim does time in prison. The rest of the book takes place after he gets out and attempts to start over in a quiet valley in Colorado. Jim is a gifted painter with a growing following, but he can’t seem to hide from his violent impulses and his grief ridden past. Fly fishing is the only way he has found to escape from the rages that threaten to consume him. One day as he is driving back from one of his favorite fishing spots he sees a man beating a small horse, almost to death.
Jim’s reaction to this precipitates a chain of events that makes the reader wonder what the true definition of “good” is. Can a man who kills to protect the innocent be good, even if the killing is in cold blood? Can a human being ever really start again or are we too weighed down by all the previous baggage in our life? These and other questions loom large in The Painter. The author uses setting to contrast beautifully with the violent nature of Jim and readers will have a difficult time deciding if he is the hero or the villain. But maybe inside all of us is the capacity for good or evil and we can choose which one rules us. Highly recommended.
— Michael Nelson, Mount Pleasant Regional Library, Mount Pleasant, S.C.
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