In this time of Trump, our political discourse is thick with mythology of a more temporally immediate sort than the Greeks or Vikings were ever able to cook up — stories of a better, safer, whiter America that existed once upon a time, a place we can return to if we try. The politics of today echo, of course, the history of America, and its core national dream, a vision of bounty and freedom there for the taking, an ocean away. But there’s always been a darker side to American mythology, a reality of conflict with and fear of the unknown. On a thematic level, at least, this dark side of American myth is the grist for Giano Cromley’s debut novel, American Mythology.
A well-crafted work of upmarket adventure fiction that incorporates elements of mystery and the supernatural, Cromley engages along the way in something of a meditation on America, its history, and its beliefs in the concepts of civilization and Manifest Destiny. Much of this meditation is implied through Cromley’s use of a mysterious journal which tells the stories of various agents of American “civilization” who have come to no good in the forested, volcanic environs of Ramsey Lake, purported home of Bigfoot and his more cerebral, shaman-esque partner, the Watcher.
After a brief prologue depicting Jute Ramsey, the book’s main character and Ramsey Lake’s namesake, on his first Bigfoot safari with his dad — a trip that would change father and son profoundly for the worse — American Mythology settles in with Professor Bernard, a lifelong Bigfoot scholar who’s lost his way, after a fashion. Bernard, who will serve as a primary antagonist for much of the book, has recently come to the conclusion that Sasquatch is not, in fact, real, a view he’s planning on sharing with an auditorium full of ticket-buying Sasquatchians.
The audience response to Bernard’s newfound skepticism. and the pointed way in which he shares it, is what you might expect from a crowd of graphic-tee-shirted, trucker-hatted, lifelong ‘Squatchers, the professor injured in the melee that interrupts and ends his talk. Barely making it to his car, Bernard heads for the nearest hospital, St. Peter’s. Night having fallen, rain with it, Bernard is misguided by his car’s faulty GPS, diverted instead to St. Pete’s Tavern in the tiny town of Basic, Montana where he attempts to drink away the pain.
At St. Pete’s Tavern, Bernard and Vicky Xu (an MFA film student who’s tailed Bernard from the event hoping he’ll agree to be the subject of her thesis film) run across Jute and Jute’s lifelong bff, Vergil, in the midst of a regular meeting of the Basic Bigfoot Society, of which they are the only two members. Jute and Vergil have come together to plan their annual Bigfoot safari, a tradition that effectively began with that first trip Jute went on with his father, years earlier. The meeting of these four characters provides the jumping off point for American Mythology’s dramatic cornerstone, an actual hunt for Bigfoot.
Over the course of their adventure, American Mythology’s five heroes (Vergil’s daughter Rye soon joins the group) exhibit a combination of the sort of Bigfoot-hunting expertise and advanced equipment necessary for a mission like this (drones and night-vision goggles, bear spray and Bigfoot traps) and the kind of bumbling that made me think of Scooby Doo once or twice. Fortunately, I am a big fan of Scooby Doo. Also fortunately, the book never takes itself so seriously that this Scooby-Doo-ness (Scooby-Doo-age?) is a problem. As a matter of fact, the simple structure and sometimes-antic action allow Cromley to keep things moving briskly, providing character development and light humor in the process.
Overall, American Mythology succeeds in what it sets out to do, which is primarily to provide entertainment. This is an intriguing tale complete with revelations that affect all the major characters materially. In a basic, dramatic sense, there is no wasted effort for the reader. Aside from the implied critique of American history and the mythology that invariably goes with it, the book’s point, it seems to me, is hope; hope that there may yet remain a little magic in our jaded, over-developed world, magic that dwells in the remote forests and jungles, the “between places” of native myth that are guarded by creatures with a connection to that other, metaphysical world, creatures like Bigfoot and the Watcher. The hope is that this magic, this connection to the metaphysical world, may be capable of saving us if we have the courage to seek it out and the strength to believe when we are lucky enough to find it.
***
American Mythology
by Giano Cromley
Doubleday; 304 p.