I'm talking about Gary Hazen, one of the characters in "The Grace That Keeps This World" by Tom Bailey. This is the 2008 selection for One Book, One Community.
The Hazen family; father Gary, mother Susan and two grown sons, live in the Adirondack Park region of New York state. They practice living off the land, not using anything they don't have to, not purchasing anything in excess. This is all well and good if it's your choice to live that way. When the boys were younger there weren't any conflicts, but now that the sons have reached an age of maturity, they see that their father's way of life might not be the best way of living for themselves.
They each deal with their father in their own way. Gary David the oldest, goes along with whatever Gary the father says, just to keep the peace, but lives a secret life that he knows his father would disapprove of. Kevin, the younger son, takes an entirely different tack, going to college-with his mother's blessing, if not his father's- and planning a future away from the hard-scrabble existence of his parents.
You just know something bad is going to happen. And it does, on the first day of deer hunting season.
The chapters alternate between members of the Hazen family and people in the community. You get a true sense of what is would be like living in a remote area, away from fast food and strip malls-where every dollar is earmarked for a necessity.
Gary Hazen is a hard man to live with, one with values and standards he wants to live up to, and ones that he expects his sons to want to reach also. It is to his regret that he was so unyielding.
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