HALO - Book review

 

HALO

John Loveday

A very good atmospheric novel set in the Old West, narrated by the boy Scrag who’s on the verge of manhood.  It’s 1859 when he joins the Oregon wagon train, making friends with the beautiful Lorelei, her daughter Justly, and Sylvester, a poet and pioneer photographer.  

Scrag discovers sex and the strange power that pictures and poems possess. We also meet a cast of well-drawn characters, not least the preacher they dubbed Thou-Wert, and Daniel, who had been to the town of Halo before, a town the wagon train hitches up at after being lost. Halo is a town that festers with hate and suspicion. The lightness of the first part is overshadowed by the cloud of impending doom that hovers in Halo.

An exceptional first novel, this won the David Higham Prize for Fiction. Readers who liked True Grit might like this.