THE LOVE THAT MOVES THE STARS

Debut author Whelan presents a novel about a disciplined wanderer and the many lives that he touches.

It’s 1974 in Canterbury, Massachusetts, and Virgil Peterson is working in the local library. One day, he’s startled by a man in an elaborate leather cape—a local personality known as “the Leatherman,” who, Virgil thinks, looks like “some outlandish composite of 18th-century swashbuckling pirate, American Indian sachem and medieval hermit.” He soon finds that the offbeat Leatherman has a strange effect on him. The man is no ordinary vagabond: He walks in a geographic circle, every 28 days, that takes him through precisely the same towns; the route takes him from Boston to Brockton to Lowell to Somerville. The Leatherman also tells Virgil that he wants to learn about every celestial object in the night sky. He wants to do so for a very specific reason: to impress a woman known as “Honeybee.” In 1943 in Jackson, Mississippi, Honeybee lost her young child after an incident that still causes her great guilt. Now, in 1974, she attempts to contact her sister in Massachusetts, with whom she has a strained relationship. The book darts back and forth between the past and present lives of Virgil, the Leatherman, and Honeybee. All three have suffered a great deal in their respective backstories, and all have doubts about their futures. The Leatherman’s history receives the most attention in the text, delving into his time in France in the 1930s and his love of a married Frenchwoman named Béatrice. He is, after all, “The Man Who Walks In A Circle,” and it becomes clear that he didn’t embark on such a strange existence just for fun. The allusions to the work of poet Dante are many; at the outset, for instance, there’s a reference to a famous quote about abandoning all hope. Readers will enjoy finding out how much of Dante’s work made it into this strange story, and they’ll also be interested in just how strange the story becomes, as drug use, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a group of other homeless people play parts. The Leatherman also imparts unusual but notably succinct observations along the way. He notes, for instance, how he’s been around long enough to have seen the disappearance of the fedora in men’s fashion as well as “the fleets of Technicolor pleasure boats of the Fifties and Sixties.” Still, he remains a grounded character who’s able to carry much of the story. That said, some developments strain credulity, including events in Leatherman’s detailed past in Europe as a jewel thief and cinephile. Also, readers won’t be surprised that his days as a criminal in the ’30s didn’t turn out well given his current circumstances as a wanderer 40 years hence. Nevertheless, readers will find themselves engaged as the fates of Virgil, the Leatherman, and Honeybee become inexorably intertwined. Taken individually, these players are merely frustrated individuals with sad pasts, but together, they create their own unique adventure.

A novel that forges its own memorable path despite some overly elaborate backstory.