Eastertown

In Max Crawford's Eastertown, one character describes the unnamed western plains community at the center of the novel : "It is a very small place. Sometimes you wonder whether it exists at all, it is so small." Crawford's poignant novel reminds us that there are tragic events so small, so specific to an individual that, like a tree falling in the forest with no one around, they seem inconsequential, but these events have real impact nonetheless. Shortly after the Second World War, Doc Bavender and his friends Llewellyn and Dorothea Rainborough have returned home to resume their lives and responsibilities at the local school, the school they themselves once attacked. Llewellyn is the school superintendent, and wife Dorothea coaches the school's drama productions. Doc Bavender teaches science, the field that ultimately leads this good man to question life itself. When Bavender's family is struck by a senseless accident, every person in the town in affected. Throughout the novel, personal lives weave with a succession of school pageants and plays. The school's stage is at the heart of the story, even as it is at the heart of the school, and the school at the heart of the town--from the opening chapter with its performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and a new-but-old production of A Christmas Carol, to the dramatic murder trial that comes to town, to the redemption story of the Easter Pageant and the concluding dramas of the old setters' day parade and the school's commencement ceremony. Through some rites and dramas, some healing is achieved by a town torn, and those who remain--teachers, students, administrators, townsfolk--know that they will all will come together again in time for the start of a new year.