Book Report: In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

If you've ever driven to the west coast from anywhere east of the Rockies, you know how much of the United States is a complete wasteland. There are thousands and thousands of square miles unfit for human habitation. In the Distance spends most of its time in that unforgiving place, following a Swedish immigrant named Hakan (pronounced Hawk-can) from boyhood to old age as he does little more than survive. The landscape is unrelentingly bleak, and it's an apt metaphor for Hakan's life. After getting separated from his brother, Linus, on the voyage to America in the mid 1800s, he ends up in San Francisco and makes it a goal to reunite with Linus in New York. He speaks no English, and so the early part of the book is nearly incomprehensible, as the events are seen through his eyes and interpreted incompletely based on how Hakan understands the situation. He's held captive by some sort of criminal gang based in a California gold-rush town, led by a violent, disgusting woman with rotting gums who makes Hakan her sexual slave.

After escaping her clutches, he spends most of his life avoiding other humans, especially after killing most of a band of marauding religious extremists called the Avenging Angels and becoming a wanted man. Hakan is a giant, and is for the most part a gentle soul who I rooted for, but he's in mortal danger for nearly the entire book. He's either on the verge of starvation, or freezing to death, or dying from an infection, or thirst, or at the hands of whatever bloodthirsty vigilantes who have stumbled across him. In between, years pass as he merely subsists in isolation. He comes into contact with a few good people, but they die off more quickly than your average Spinal Tap drummer, often in similarly gruesome fashion. It's a rough world, and Hakan inhabits one of the most unwelcoming areas of it, with unpleasant results.