Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys

Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
HarperCollins, August 2020

A poetic novel based on a true story of friendship between a boy and a murderer in mid-twentieth century Saskatchewan.

The characters in Rabbit Foot Bill are the kind at which Helen Humphreys excels in bringing to life: emotionally distant loners, scarred by trauma. Leonard tells the story that begins in 1947, when Bill, a man his father's age, is living in a sort of cave he's carved for himself into the side of a hill, far outside of town. Leonard is twelve, son of the stationmaster in tiny Canwood, Saskatchewan. Leonard and Bill have a special bond, and the boy spends as much time with him as possible, avoiding bullies at school.

        The next day at school I try to keep well away from the group of boys who are always beating on me for reasons I never understand. It's raining, so I must be hit. We're doing sums in arithmetic, so I must be hit. The sky is a certain shade of blue, so I must be hit.

After witnessing Bill commit an act of violence, Leonard doesn't see him again for a dozen years. In the meantime, Leonard becomes a psychiatrist and takes a position at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, where scientifically dubious experiments with LSD are underway. There are 1,800 patients in the facility, including Leonard's old friend Bill. Something bad seems bound to happen.

Humphreys is one of my very favourite, must-read-everything-she-writes authors. Her writing has a quiet melancholic power, and her language use thrills my word-loving soul. Her stories are grounded in the natural world and her flawed characters are deserving of grace. Whatever place and time, I feel myself sink into her descriptions of setting.

        Supper is cold beef and potato salad. Father doesn't like talk at meals, so we sit there in the cool of the kitchen with the night noise of the prairie outside and the rattle of knives and forks against our plates. My parents won't be finding out about my missing school until tomorrow, so tonight I am safe and I sink into the calm waters of this, into our quiet supper in the kitchen, followed by my mother and I listening to the radio in the parlour and father sitting on the porch, smoking. I don't call it happiness, but looking back now I think it was a sort of happiness; that shelter is a kind of happiness.

 A novel like Rabbit Foot Bill is many things, including shelter, escape, and a window on truth about the human condition.

Giller prediction: MEDIUM HIGH - Much as I love it, I think this will be on the periphery of the longlist, bumped out by flashier novels. But I hope I'm wrong.

NOTE: I'm grateful to HarperCollins for providing a review copy.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.