Review of “The Poacher’s Son” by Paul Doiron

This is a darned good book. I totally agree (for a change) with the blurbs characterizing this first novel as “compelling,” moving,” and “a first-rate story.” (I should note however that my “favorite” blurb, which reads “overwhelming praise echoes throughout the land!” sounds more like an election claim or call to war than a review excerpt.) This book is the first in a planned suspense series involving Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch.

The author, who is Editor-in-Chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, and a Registered Maine Guide, combines a love story about the Maine wilderness with a character study of a son struggling to love and be loved by his father, and a suspenseful murder mystery.

Twenty-four-year-old Mike Bowditch wanted to be a game warden since he was a boy. His mother left his father – who was an alcoholic, a womanizer, and a game poacher – when Mike was nine, but Mike never lost the love of the woods that was possibly the only positive thing he got from his dad. As the book begins, Mike gets a call that a sheriff’s deputy and also a prominent land developer were killed the previous night, and Mike’s dad Jack, suspected of the crime, has disappeared.

Mike knows his father is many bad things, but is convinced he is not a murderer. He risks his job, his relationship with his girlfriend Sarah from whom he is already separated, and even his life to go to his father’s defense. Mike admits:

“It seemed like I’d spent my whole life either embarrassed by him or trying to win his approval. I even became a law officer because of him – to make amends, if that was possible, for the petty crimes he’d committed against society and against his own family. …when I told him about my plans to join the Warden Service … I wanted him to see me – and himself – in a new way. But all he did was laugh. So why was I rushing to his rescue now? I guess I was still waiting for the day when he decided he needed me.”

To prove his father’s innocence, Mike gets help from Charley, a colorful retired warden pilot who knows Mike’s dad, and together the two men traverse the Maine wilderness in search of Jack.

Through all the stress, Mike also struggles to do his job, which he loves and for which he feels a responsibility. There are some beautifully evocative descriptions of the wilderness as Mike makes his way through the dappled densely vegetated tract of his territory. Trying to locate a marauding bear he reports:

“I followed the track through the wall of sumacs and alder, ducking my head against the leaves to enter the forest. Here the wind diminished, but I could still feel its breath against the back of my neck, and when I set down my feet on the dry leaves, the sound was sharp and brittle. The trunks of the trees crowded close about me, the paper birches glowing ghost-white in the shadows. Every spruce seemed large enough to conceal a bear beneath its dark, shaggy boughs.”

Maine Woods

Many townspeople turn against Mike because of his father, and because of Mike’s insistence that his dad is innocent. No one takes the killing of a policy deputy lightly.

But there is a moment of grace, when Mike gets unexpected sympathy from a place he least expected or deserved it. He marvels:

“People disappoint you so often. I hardly knew how to react when they surpassed all your hopes.”

Evaluation: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There is enough suspense from the murder mystery to keep you turning the pages. The character development of Mike is good enough that you feel you must have known him at some point in your life. But more than that, simultaneously with the unfolding of the drama, the reader gets an interesting and informative look at what game wardens do. And the author’s love of the wilderness is so palpable, you often feel as if you are sharing moments with him in a sacred space, in which nature provides sustenance and renewal in its splendid, primeval-seeming vastness.

Rating: 4/5

Published by Minotaur Books, 2010