Charles Marden is a judge and apple grower in Vancouver whose only son has been reported missing at the end of World War I. The grief-stricken father sets out on a pilgrimage to find the exact spot where his son died. But he soon learns he is not the only survivor William has left behind. His journey turns into a quest where he remains one step behind William’s girlfriend, Elaine Reed. She is also seeking the truth of William’s last moments, but for different reasons. Elaine is pregnant, unwed, and now alone. But Marden is no stranger to being alone, having lost his wife to the Spanish flu just three weeks earlier.
Marden is our grim conductor in A Century of November, W.D. Wetherell’s seventh book. Winner of the 2004 Michigan Literary Fiction Award, November provides a hauntingly real insider’s view of the front lines, the scars and the casualties of war. Poetic at times and beautifully detailed, the tone encapsulates those chilling realities.
Along his pilgrimage, Marden meets several well-depicted characters who help him navigate the long journey to Belgium and many of whom are dealing with their own grief: “What does missing mean, actually mean?" one anonymous character asks him, "Is it missing like an ashtray goes missing, something that might turn up at any moment? Or is it missing like missing someone you love who’s temporarily away in the country? Missing? Why don’t they spell it out? Your husband is missing which means he’s killed only we don’t know where his body is so that’s what we’re going to call it.” These incidental characters Marden encounters spring up strong in voice and then disappear, letting him continue on his way.
The observations Marden makes on his journey are poignant and will make readers take pause of war in their own time.
He was used to considering death as something that happened to one person at a time, and now here, four thousand miles from the front line, was evidence of a different style of death, death all together, death en masse….
Near the front lines of the battlefield, Marden encounters leftover mines, muddy trenches and poisonous gasses that still cling to the air. In Marden, Wetherell shows us a man grappling with grief but searching for hope in a bleak place and a time of hopelessness.
- Kristin Johnson