Some guys have some pretty grim tales to tell. Take Saskatchewan
author Rob Harasymchuk's 36-year old hero, for example. First, he has
an alphabet soup of a name, Dingonaslav Marion Radashonovich.
Then there is the fact that he lives among "a pack
of starving coyotes," the 900 inhabitants of Bennington
Falls who know his barkeep sister, Marty, as the town tramp
and his kid brother, Pitch, as "the feeb" who
parades his garden gnomes, including the hollowed out Big
Daddy, on the family's front lawn, and daily counts the
rubber bands he keeps in his coffee can container.
Since he was 18 and his drunken father and despondent mother
were killed in a crash at a railroad crossing, Dingonaslav,
now known as Dingo Radish, has been the sole support for
his siblings, a role that meant existing on petty thievery,
part-time employment, and the dole.
But despite his problems, Dingo has a major dream of leaving
the Falls and his past behind, and he has a plan to make
it all happen - all of which results in a reader's rollercoastering
ride of plot twists and turns, excitement and entertainment,
and the introduction of a turtle named Jesus.
As Dingo shares the background intimacies of his life -
getting beat up while defending his brother from bullies,
run-ins with his old man, and his mother’s claim, “Dingo,
you were a life sentence” - he also reveals how much
of a con man he can be, how he “can lie with the best
of them,” and just how dedicated he is to making a
better life for Marty who has become pregnant and for Pitch
who has become emotionally dependent upon him. Theirs is
a poignant story of skillfully drawn down-on-their-luck
characters held together by a family bond as everything
else around them seems to go wrong.
To reach his goal of the good life for his family Dingo
needs to climb the ladder, starting on rung one by blackmailing
a local service centre manager into a partnership. Dingo
will steal chemical fertilizer from nearby depots and the
manager will resell it to area farmers. That works for a
while but Dingo figures he needs ever more money to fulfill
his dream. So, to get a better return on his risk he decides
to go for a major haul, a million dollar theft of a semi-trailer
load of fertilizer hi-jacked right from the Saskatoon plant
where it is manufactured.
True to form for Dingo, though, his best laid plans of casing
the plant, hitching a trailer to a rented rig, and then
escaping go wildly astray. First he gets caught up in a
group of environmentalist pickets parading around the plant,
meets up with
Emily, a female bioethicist who questions his motives, a
police dog that bites his thigh and a security guard who
knocks him unconscious. After a stint in jail, he gets a
buddy to help with the robbery while he uses a subterfuge
to gain access to the plant’s loading dock. As he
is hitching up all hell breaks loose. Security guards start
shooting at a group of intruders, Dingo dodges the bullets
and bumps into and falls over new and old friends from the
environmentalist protest. With two of them rescued and in
the cab of his truck he crashes the gate to escape.
But his break-out is only the trigger for further troubles.
The subterfuge he was so proud of for getting him into the
plant almost costs him his life. And one of the people he
rescued is a kidnapped scientist who has been working on
stem cell research and adaptations of fertilizer products
that could turn them into weapons of mass destruction. And
obviously some one wants him back. The other person he rescued
is the bioethicist, Emily, whose scientist father has already
been murdered. And obviously the murderers want their identity
kept secret. All of which gets Dingo into some pretty tight
quarters. His robbery pal is tortured and killed. Pitch
is kidnapped. Dingo and Emily get into a gunfight where
she is wounded and he kills one of the shooters. And in
a final confrontation, just when Dingo’s dreams are
about to become dust, he is saved by the most unlikely of
heroes, and not Jesus the turtle.
Hyrasamchuk’s easily readable debut novel was nominated
as a finalist in the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel category
for 2005. An amazing result since the author admits it was
turned down a couple of hundred times before being accepted
for publication. Evidently, more than Dingo’s dreams
came true.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
M. Wayne Cunningham writes his reviews in Kamloops BC. Formerly an
English instructor and a senior manager in post-secondary education
in three provinces he also served as the Executive Director of the
Saskatchewan Arts Board. A member of the Crime Writers of Canada and
the Canadian Authors Association, his reviews have appeared in various
publications including a weekly column he wrote for two years for
the Kamloops Daily News. He can be reached at mw_cunningham@telus.net
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