In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

Coffee House Press, 240 pages, $16.95

“In the Distance” is an artistic roller coaster of tension and release. Hernan Diaz has crafted a story about the lonely, meandering migration of a boy in the mid-1800s looking first for his older brother and then ultimately, as a man, for nothing he can name.

Håken Söderström was born and lived for a while in a rural part of Sweden. His family subsisted in dour conditions. As a last effort to cast a lifeline to good fortune, his father managed to obtain money to send Håken and his brother, Linus, on a ship bound for New York.

This is not, however, one of those many immigrant stories of making it in the big city. To the contrary, Håken becomes separated from his brother when they dock in England to transfer to another ship and winds up in South America. (Yikes!) But not for long. As we readers wring our hands over this young lad’s fate, the Brennans, a family sailing to San Francisco to participate in the gold rush, informally adopts him as their worker. (Phew!) He can make enough money and travel via land east to New York, he soon reasons, despite not understanding the geography of North America. Alas, if only it were that simple.

After the Brennans are run off their gold claim by a gang run by a toothless, evil woman (who, I swear, evokes Ursula from “Disney’s The Little Mermaid” in my mind), Håken becomes the woman’s captive in a surreal episode. (Yikes!) He eventually escapes (Phew!), only to come close to perishing in the punishing desert heat and dust (Yikes!). Then he is saved by an obsessed botanist and naturalist, roaming the desert looking for specimens. (Phew!) The botanist teaches him rudimentary medical skills. This pleasant interlude, of course, cannot last, so our hero is then put to the test again. And again. In and out of danger.

Each time, for better or worse, Håken learns new skills and more about human nature. Eventually he is a man, then an older man, but he does not totally lose his childlike nature. Even at the end, he has not managed to complete the puzzle of what the world looks like and determine how he can live as a normal human being. But there is hope.

Everything is complicated after Håken kills some people. That brings us to the start of the book, although that start is really the end of the story. Håken, or “The Hawk,” because no one can pronounce his Swedish name, is aboard a ship trapped in ice. His reputation as a killer is enhanced by his towering stature — regular people looked like children to him — withdrawn demeanor, and unsociable attitude. The others on the ship fear him or hold him in awe. That’s when he uncharacteristically sits down by a fire and tells his story to the few who would listen. So you know that Håken has not crashed and burned on the roller coaster, that he somehow has survived all the awful things that happened to him. Hold onto that thought as he recounts his tale.

I would give this an MBTB star, but despite the killings and crimes committed by others, it is not truly a crime or mystery story. It is a marvelous and peculiar story about human nature and what it needs to flourish.