Weight of Dreams

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Though Agee's fourth novel is oddly book-ended between two courtroom scenes, its strength is in what lies between-- its depiction of the landscape of the Nebraska Sand Hills country, the unforgiving weather, the gritty demands of ranching andthe relationships forged between people and the animals they care for. In 1975, teenage Ty Bonte's family has been ravaged by the accidental death of his little brother. Ty is brutalized by his drunken father and unloved by his pious mother. Moreover, he keeps bad company; his villainous chum, Harney Rivers, is a small town rich boy whose cruel exploits continually go unpunished. One night, Ty and Harney beat two drunken Indian men and leave them for dead; the men survive only because Ty goes back to save them, before fleeing the state. This event is reconstructed in flashback; most of the book takes place 22 years later, when Ty is a horse trader, living modestly in Kansas. Harney, now a prosperous banker in their old Nebraska town, reenters his old buddy's life, killing Ty's beloved horse and stealing the rest of his stable, savagely beating Ty, and threatening Dakota, the woman with whom Ty has established a promising though uncertain relationship. Ty and Dakota return to Ty's family ranch, where his father is dying of emphysema and his mother is still priggish and cold. The families of the brutalized Indians seek justice, if not revenge, and Ty stands to lose everything: his woman, his ranch, his freedom. This tale of a sympathetic but busted-up man is compelling, but here the narrative suddenly diffuses, weighted down with too many characters who engage in endless machinations either to save Ty or to hurt him. Agee (Strange Angels) is best in engaging the drama of the rugged countryside. In tying up the plot, her direction scatters and each ambitious subplot grows broad and thin, diminishing the central struggle. Agent, Emma Sweeney. Author tour. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Returning to the themes of her 1993 Strange Angels—with a detour through the badlands of Russell Banks—Agee offers a rambling saga that includes an abuse-riddled Nebraska family, a hideous crime, a slow path to redemption, and the love of a good woman. Our first sight of hellion Ty Bonte is in court, where he's being fined for another wild night gone wrong. Ty is troubled but basically good: he just has a lot of monkeys on his back. His father works him like a slave on their Sandhills ranch; his mother, having moved back to town long ago and found religion, treats him like a stranger; he still blames himself for his younger brother's death in a tractor accident; and then there's Harney Rivers, the banker's son and Ty's ever-ready partner in transgression. Harney is beyond wild, and the extent of his savagery soon surfaces when he and Ty get drunk and decide to get their kicks from a pair of drunken hitchhiking Indians. Flash forward more than 20 years: Ty is living in Kansas with his own spread, trading horses and making ends meet. One day he picks up a thoroughbred he's not supposed to have, taking it and the woman who misled him, by name Dakota, back to his place. Ty and Dakota begin to fall in love, but trouble in the form of Harney, older but no less savage, follows; he kills the horse for the insurance and runs Ty through with a pitchfork. Barely recovering, Ty decides it's time to settle with all that's unresolved in his past. He heads back with Dakota—who's decided to stand by her man—to the Sandhills, where he finds his father dying; a warrant still outstanding for his own arrest after the night of beating the Indians; and Harney waiting for him.Riveting scenes of ranch life and the grimly glorious Nebraska countryside can't overcome a plot both bloated and sluggish, with a fairy-tale end painful to read.