A Place Called Hexie

Samuel Miller
AuthorHouse (2010)
ISBN 9781452027517
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (09/10) 

 

Picking up “A Place Called Hexie,” the description on the back cover really grabbed my interest. Mary Wyno, a witch from Slovenia? My native country is known for a few things, but witches, although certainly there were some, just aren’t one of our great claims to fame. After having read the Author’s note, I was really hooked. It turns out that the author’s brother Clyde, now tragically deceased, spent many years researching the history of the “Hexie” area, and even started to publish a quarterly newsletter called “The Hexie Gazette,” which ceased its publication with Clyde’s untimely death. Samuel Miller, the author of “A Place Called Hexie,” decided to use the material collected by his brother, and mix it with fiction to make it more interesting for the readers.

The framework of the novel focuses on a relationship between two men who met by chance in the Hexie area. The younger one, Wesley, a catholic priest on an extended sabbatical, first came to the area with his mother for a funeral. He felt a strong pull to his mother’s old home, and decided to have a house built there. The older one, Jacob, returned to the area of his youth to tend to his deceased wife’s grave. The two quickly formed a strong friendship and explored the area together, visiting and interacting with the people; and it is in that manner that the reader learns about the people, places and the history of Hexie.

While I really wanted to like “A Place Called Hexie,” and while I certainly applaud the author’s desire to preserve his brother’s work, the story just did not work for me. First and foremost I found way too many grammatical and proofreading issues, from extremely erratic punctuation to misspellings, from inconsistent spelling of names to some simply unreadable sentences. The writing was not fluid, the dialogue lacked sparkle and although there were several of strong – and strange – female characters mentioned in passing in the narrative, I felt the description on the back cover of the book was rather misleading. Then there was the story itself. It is difficult enough to maintain a reader’s interest for 490 pages even with a really tight story, but this one simply rambled too much and it lacked enough focus to keep me interested. There were paragraphs and pages of details which had no real impact on the story. I found it truly unnecessary to list time of most any action taken, exactly to the minute. (“Jacob woke at about 6:30 the next morning. By 7:15 he had taken a shower, dressed and placed all his belonging into his truck.”) Such details abounded in the book, down to the description of the number of drawers and shelves of the furniture in the basement and the numerical designation of most any road taken by either Wesley or Jacob to go anywhere. I have to admit that, due to the sheer amount of such minutiae, it was difficult for me to keep track of the story. I believe that it could have possibly been better to have used all of the collected data in another form, maybe a collection of short stories or something similar, where the interesting facts would not have gotten lost in all of the trivia.

I am certain that readers who enjoy detailed descriptions of places and history will enjoy “A Place Called Hexie,” and I wanted to applaud the author again for finding a way to preserve his brother’s work for a wider circle of readers.

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