REUNION OF STRANGERS

In Hobbs’ speculative novel, a group of teens build a mysterious project, and a gunfighter protects a scientist and her children from danger.

In 1986 Maine, 16-year-old Andy Banks changes after a seizure. Despite never being a “sports guy,” he suddenly wants to join the Hammond High Cougars football team and finds that he has unexpected boxing prowess. Andy then tells his older sister, Susan, and his new friend, Cougars quarterback Phil Burger, that he somehow has new memories, which someone else sent him. Fellow football players help Andy assemble an enigmatic device using items he purchases at an electronics store. Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative in an Old West-type setting, a wounded man, Henry Rawlings, gets welcome aid from Dr. Karen Wilson and her children. As he acclimates to the doctor’s “impossible machinery,” Henry, a skilled gunfighter, decides to repay the Wilsons’ kindness when intimidating men come around. The link between these dual plotlines eventually becomes clear, but not before Andy and Phil find themselves in as much peril as Henry and the Wilsons do. Hobbs’ novel, as is apparent early on, features SF elements, but it’s the human stories that steer the narrative: Karen worries that Henry is just as dangerous as the men targeting her family; Susan and Andy’s dad, Leo, still mourns the loss of the kids’ mother; and there’s even a potential love triangle. The villains stand out, as well; Henry turns out to be all too familiar with the bad guys he faces, and he helps the Wilsons prepare for their inevitable assault, while Andy and Phil face an unknown threat involving questionable, near-fatal accidents. Concise third-person narration, oscillating perspectives, and brief chapters energize the storytelling, and the SF elements are refreshingly straightforward, allowing this standalone novel to reach a satisfying resolution.

A dynamic cast headlines a taut SF thriller.