Bangor native captivates in ‘Desire Lines’

DESIRE LINES, by Christina Baker Kline, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1999, 343 pages, $24.

There’s something unsettling about the purple-pastel jacket of Christina Baker Kline’s second novel. Pictured alongside a Maine road map, with Bangor at the center, are images of a compass, a windswept country road and a yearbook-style photo of a blond teen-age girl. She is smiling but her eyes are sad and unfocused.

Kline’s 343-page tale of mystery, confusion and missed opportunities lives up to the cover design. This is no breezy, formulaic Danielle Steel yarn with a joyful ending. Although a quick read, infused with lots of snappy dialogue, it’s a wistful book with few laughs. There is constant family bickering and searching for identity. There is suicide, divorce and suspicion of murder.

So, why is “Desire Lines” such a terrific read, and why does it affirm life? Because Kline, a one-time Bangor resident, book editor and college instructor, knows how to tell a story; when to lift the reader up, when to let the reader down. The way she weaves Bangor’s families, landmarks and dirty little secrets into an honorable story is something to behold.

It would be tempting, but unfair, to describe “Desire Lines” as a woman’s novel. It’s actually a book for either gender, of any age, told by a woman, about a woman who is searching for clues to the disappearance of a young female.

The book’s central character is Kathryn Campbell, a recently divorced 28-year-old who leaves her home and job in Virginia, moves in with her mother in Bangor’s Little City neighborhood, and sets out to answer a question that has dogged her for a decade: Whatever happened to Jennifer Pelletier?

Kathryn and Jennifer were inseparable during their senior year at Bangor High — some felt Kathryn stood in her friend’s shadow. So, when Jennifer vanishes without a trace from a post-graduation party in 1986, the emptiness she, and Jennifer’s other friends, experience is palpable.

The missing girl’s twin brother, Will, forms a search party, and local police comb the scene, but the trail grows cold near the Griffin Road; a gum wrapper and barrette are the only traces of physical evidence found. Was she murdered? Or, as a missing passport from her family’s home suggests, did she leave one life behind and assume a new identity in a foreign country?

Kathryn soon is persuaded by another former classmate, Jack Ledbetter, now a Bangor Daily News editor, to write a series of stories (for hundreds and hundreds of dollars, no less), and perhaps solve the mystery. Kathryn also hopes to slay some of her own demons, and end some of the self-blame she’s felt about not really knowing Jennifer and failing to help her.

Through a series of interviews on a tight deadline, Kathryn looks up former classmates, even Jennifer’s twin brother, Will, now out of the closet and HIV positive, and his mother, who is cool at first to reopening old wounds.

Kathryn begins to sense Jennifer was a troubled soul. A suicide attempt and the suicide of her own father in the Little City Park took their toll, along with the anguish she may have felt about her own betrayal of the family’s trust. Kathryn also meets with Rick Hunter, Jennifer’s mercurial former high school teacher, whom she suspects holds the key to her friend’s disappearance.

It seems Kline is trying to portray Bangor as both a sleepy little town guarding its secrets, while at the same time, perhaps to appeal to a mass audience, painting it as a bigger city of brew pubs and strip malls. Often the two images clash, but not to the extent that they interrupt the plot. It is also unconventional that she puts Kathryn in bed with Jack Ledbetter toward the end of the book (assuming she has to at all, which is arguable), when many plots get the sweat and sex out of the way toward the beginning.

And why does Kline ask the reader to believe those investigating a missing persons case would have dismissed Hunter’s involvement with Jennifer? This is Bangor, Maine, for Pete’s sake, not Mayberry, RFD. How inept were the police, and Jennifer’s friends, that they couldn’t see the telltale signs of a teacher taking advantage of his impressionable young student?

I hope “Desire Lines”‘ movie rights have already been sold. With its references to such locales as the Sea Dog, The Bagel Shop and Governor’s Restaurant, it would be amusing to have it filmed here. But its universal themes of loneliness and the search for identity (hence the title, referring to the foot trails people create throughout unmarked territory) could be transferred to any little city, or big town (take your pick), in America.

Christina Baker Kline will read from “Desire Lines” 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Bangor Public Library. She will read and sign copies of her novel at 3 p.m. Sunday at Borders Books and Music in Bangor.