One Indian Summer

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Wayne Curtis, author of the nonfiction Current in the Stream: Miramichi
People and Places, has staked a creative claim to the Miramichi River
region of New Brunswick. The area provides a backdrop for young Steve
Moar’s struggles toward maturity and fulfilment in this coming-of-age
first novel.

Steve’s demons are the familiar ones of lust, shame, anger, and
infatuation. It’s too bad that Curtis’s earnest character portraits
do not translate into more than caricatures. While his sense of place is
strong and true, his characters (with the possible exception of Old Tom,
Steve’s father) are mired in stereotypes. For example, there is Cindy,
the country girl from “the other side of the river” who loves Steve
and nearly tricks him into marriage. Curtis’s use of Steve as a
first-person narrator shows a similar lack of depth and imagination.