A Few Wise Moves Lift 'Prudence' From Melodrama To Something More
Again, the key here is in the echoes that fill the novel. When Frankie gathers Felix and a few of his friends to hunt down a missing German prisoner of war, the shooting that brings the search to a bloody end doesn't happen just once. Treuer revisits the tragedy again and again, playing the moment from the perspectives of nearly everyone involved. Each time it's brought up in conversation, each time it's recalled involuntarily, this hard kernel of the book comes back both the same and slightly different. With every repetition, the moment gathers weight and dimension, shedding the trappings of tired melodrama I'd been dreading.
This holds true for the characters, as well. Happily, Treuer soon shoves aside the cardboard cutouts of Emma and her husband in order to make space for Frankie, Felix and Frankie's friend Billy — and, eventually, Prudence too. Each of these characters comes to be defined not so much by what they say as by what they leave in silence, a silence soon interpreted by the next character to grab the reins of the narrative. The result makes for compelling reading, as each new page breeds both familiarity and — partly because of that familiarity — the capacity to surprise.
It's that paradox, that binding of the familiar to the surprising, that guides the novel into the darkest nooks of the characters' minds, and in so doing dredges up an unlikely sympathy. By taking us one step backward for every two steps forward, Treuer doesn't just unravel the plot we might expect; he prompts us to interrogate the assumptions — racial, sexual and otherwise — that build up those expectations in the first place.
In other words, Treuer seems to say, don't get too caught up in the details of the dead body above the bar. If you do, you might miss the arc of her fall — and the echoes of the tragedy that pushed her.
Read an excerpt of Prudence