The Painter by Peter Heller

A lot of people might say Jim Stegner lives a charmed life. He’s a talented painter who lives in New Mexico, knows a gallery owner who trumpets his work and then sells the paintings for five figures. Stegner is on an artistic roll, in demand for his work, and a colorful interview. He is also an accomplished fly fisherman. What’s to levy about his life? Paint when you are inspirited and fish when you aren't.

Try his two failed marriages, his teenage daughter who used to love fishing before shifting her interests to drugs. And his temper. The son of an Oregon logger, he has a reputation. He puts down people who’ve wronged him, carries a .41 magnum revolver, did some time for attempted murder of a guy who lusted after his daughter. Ended up moving to a valley in rural Colorado to paint, to fish, to heal.

Returning from a outing on a quality stream, he sees Dell Siminoe, an outfitter, savagely beating a small horse that was reluctant to get in a livestock trailer. Stegner protests and puts the guy into the dirt.

A few days later, he heads out to do some nighttime fishing and comes across an encampment headed by Siminoe; they are all drinking and bragging about the next day’s hunt. Still seething about Dell beating that horse, Stegner creeps up on the camp and waits for Dell to eventually have to go take a leak. When the time comes, Stegner whacks Dell across the head with a rock. What the rock started, the river finished.

The locals don’t much like the Siminoe’s. They’ve been investigated numerous time for poaching, so maybe the police won’t look too hard. But the Siminoe clan has a long memory and the wherewithal to do something about Stegner.

Author Heller has a history writing for numerous outdoor magazines and his descriptions of the landscape and fishing are lyrical and downright musical. Not so much when the narrative was directed at Stegner’s art or the vengeance the Siminoe clan attempt to pour on Stegner. The writing style was either abrupt phrases (Ken Bruen does it way better) or long narratives and I never was able to be get accustomed to the back and forth of styles. Having said that, I’m betting plenty of readers will appreciate the ying and yang of styles and like the extremes of Stegner’s personality.

East Coast Don