RIVERBANK TWEED AND ROADMAP JENKINS

Well-traveled words of wisdom—a whole bushelful—filtered through the life and times of a sagacious golf caddie.

Roadmap Jenkins is a caddie and a higher order of being. His organic communion with fairway and green is not of the mystical variety, nor bred in the bone. It’s hard-won from long association, day after day reading the land, the sky, the light and shadows. He’s generous with his learning, not only to duffers humbled and respectful after having sent their ball off to explore the woods like a sparrowhawk, but also to the story’s narrator, Riverbank Tweed, a novice caddie Roadmap takes under his wing. Roadmap is an appealing character in his crusty, avuncular way. He is also brimming with wise sentiments—touchstones for a considered life—that are slung about like hash at a cheap diner and as hackneyed (more so) as they are worthy: “The more you work, the more you’ll learn. The more you learn, the more you'll want to work.” Or “Long as you dream, your eyes'll sparkle. And as long as they sparkle, your life’ll be good.” Which is a shame because the heavy-handed sermonizing gets in the way of some otherwise smart, transporting prose—“There’s a sweet feeling when I’m walking down a fairway, surveying the hazards, mapping the yardage, sighting the landmarks, letting the wind brush against my whiskers”—and a finely caught, storm-racked round at Cypress Point, which Links (Follow the Wind, 1995) nearly suffocates under a rising tide of banality: “The memory of today is gonna be his own personal Liberty Bell, gonna be there for him every day for the rest of his life.”

When the author’s preaching gives way to his passion for golf, the story has moments as elemental and sustaining as the warmth of a fire in the clubhouse hearth.