Constant Reader

Book review by Angie Barker

When I was a kid I thought my backyard was magic. Not like I can fly with pixie dust and happy thoughts, but in an I’m-going-to-Disneyland-sort-of-location-specific magic. My backyard had everything a kid could wish for: A Big Bird swing set that actually had a giant Big Bird you could ride, a basketball court and a swimming pool. 

I wasn’t rich. Let’s get that out of the way. These weren’t objects used to signify wealth but function. They got us kids out of the house and kept us within earshot. The swimming pool was above ground, and as a kid I didn’t understand things like insurance and curb appeal. The only thing a pool meant to me was “cannonball.” And the basketball court was actually a dog kennel the old owners had partially taken down. The concrete was a patchwork of sawed-off rusty pipes and bent fencing. We put a layer of safety cement over the top and slapped a hoop on one end. That’s just solid parenting right there. The swing set I have zero defense for. It was straight baller, and living on a corner lot the exposure drew its fair share of neighborhood kids. Big Bird became my popularity wingman.

Backyards usually invoke a Norman Rockwell image of barbecues and a game of catch while a golden retriever frolics in the foreground. Hot dogs and baseball are the icons of America and a backyard will provide you some of each. A backyard is a patch of ownership. A place to plant our flags and declare, “This land is mine, and I shall plant my hopes and dreams within its American soil.” These are the reasons we feel violated, affronted and scared when the media tells us horrible things are happening right in our own backyards. Author Scott E. Newton uses this defensive position in his novel, “Duane Digs a Hole,” as a way to nudge the reader awake.

Duane Peerson is an average guy living in Lake Elmo who wants to dig a hole in his backyard. He has no motive beyond wanting to dig and spend time with his kids out of doors. Pretty soon all the neighborhood kids want to dig for treasure, and Duane has a yard full of pirates every weekend. It’s cute stuff that’s straightforward and heartwarming. It’s also not that oddball of behavior for Minnesota as one might think. Search epic backyard videos and a Cologne dad pops up who built a 45-second sledding hill in his backyard. Truth is stranger than fiction. It’s more epic that’s for sure.

The first part of the novel is the sentimental Rockwell painting mentioned earlier that primes the reader to relate to Duane and his family. The second part is something totally different and I have to say new, at least to me, unlike anything I have read before. It reads like fanfiction from a Berkley grad philosopher (which Newton is) who wants to validate the ideals of the 1960s failed counterculture revolution. His message is peace and redemption in the United States. His ideas are radical: like cutting the military budget by 90 percent, using B-52 bombers to drop billions of dollars on major cities around the world and putting women in the driver’s seat of his flower powered bus. Delicious.

The crazier the novel got the louder I found myself cheering.

Gloria Alfred, aka Gloria Allred, helps Lake Elmo secede from the Union. Um, OK. Jane La Fond, aka Jane Fonda, becomes Queen of the Hmong community and helps overthrow the Laos government. Why not? Obama shows up to help Duane dig his hole and drink PBR on the deck. At this point, Obama drinking PBR while trying to solve a major crisis is the most plausible thing that’s happened.

Newton interweaves truth and fiction so often that I began to feel like Peeta Mellark. My Kindle is filled with notes asking “real or not real”? Either way Newton has the reader questioning and, the ultimate objective, doing some digging of their own.

As Duane drives shovel after shovel into his backyard he metaphorically reveals the layers of American history. These are the things that are really going on in our own backyards and while some would prefer to keep them buried and forgotten others may find this novel’s excavation refreshing. Can you dig it?

 

Albert Lea resident Angie Barker is an avid reader and has a degree in English literature from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Email her at zoller@hotmail.com.