PILGRIM’S HARBOR by Floyd Skloot (Story Line...

PILGRIM’S HARBOR by Floyd Skloot (Story Line Press: $14.95; 195 pp., paperback original). In this understated first novel, Skloot offers an inverted twist on the popular “road” story. Instead of wandering the country, encountering different types of people, narrator Dewey Howser waits for the road to bring people to the small Northwestern motel he manages. It’s the perfect job for the alienated Dewey: The superficial conversations allow him to preserve the illusion of being connected to the human race, but preclude close relationships. The arrival of Cindy Bonds, a beautiful, self-consciously free spirit, interrupts this vapid idyll. Their brief fling shatters Dewey’s armor, leaving him vulnerable to the world and his own repressed desires. This rude epiphany enables him to abandon his sessile existence in a confirmation of his long-dormant humanity.