I'll Find You
by Clair M. Poulson
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Covenant Communications (American Fork, Utah): 2001. Trade paperback: 310 pages. ISBN-10: 1-57734-801-X Suggested retail price: $14.95 (US) Tags: abduction; kidnapping; prison; Religious; Thriller Tactical strength: [3/10] |
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Clair Poulson's most recent novel, I'll Find You presents readers with an exercise in tedious exposition. I cannot think of another book that approaches the repetitious description of I'll Find You. The cover promises "a novel of suspense," and the plot could easily lead to a suspenseful situation, if Poulson would stop belaboring the details and allow the plot to move forward at a pace other than trudgingly slow.
I'll Find You starts out with five-year-old Jeri Satch witnessing the abduction of her best friend Rusty. Even at that young age, she felt she should have prevented the kidnapping, and she vows, "I'll find you." Seventeen years later, Jeri has completed a degree in accounting and follows the promptings of the spirit to take a job with a Sacramento firm. One of her accounts, a private prison, has terrible books, so she visits the prison. While there, she takes a tour and sees a well-muscled prisoner with blue eyes just like Rusty's.
Jeri meets with the prisoner, now known as Randy Moore, and awakens in him the long-suppressed memory of his former family and abduction. Rusty's abductor had tried to sell Rusty, but when the deal fell through, the abductor kept Rusty, changed his name to Randy, and raised him in a life of crime and abuse. Rusty ran away from his abductor at age 15 and eventually got convicted for armed robbery. Rusty claims he lost the stolen half million dollars during the police pursuit, but the bank and the police think Rusty hid the money. Rusty knows that he cannot recover the money on his own, so he enlists the help of his cellmate, Chum. Later, Rusty regrets confiding in Chum when Chum starts giving Rusty a hard time about meeting with Jeri. Chum sees only competitor for the money.
Rusty gets out on parole and he continues his friendship with Jeri. Jeri and Rusty both supress their romantic feelings toward each other. Jeri has promised herself that she will only marry a Temple-worthy Mormon man, and Rusty believes that a good girl like Jeri should have nothing to do with scum like himself. Jeri contacts Rusty's parents, who travel to California to meet him. Rusty has secret plans that would involve Jeri with recovering the hidden money, but he puts these aside after meeting his family.
Chum gets out of prison several months later and wants all the money for himself. He abducts Jeri to force Rusty to reveal the location of the money. Now Rusty must take a turn as the devoted seeker who will never stop until he finds his lost friend.
In the hands of a skilled storyteller, this plot could have forced you to the edge of your seat wondering if Rusty will find Jeri in time to save her from the evil murderer Chum. In the hands of Clair Poulson, you have to make a determined commitment that you will push forward through all the unnecessary verbiage, hoping that you won't fall asleep again.
Poulson belabors every point, ad nauseum. He repeats even the simplest details as if he worries that you will somehow forget details presented only a few pages earlier. Two separate sections start "Randy Moore, Inmate #556770" (21, 38). This type of needless repetition also extends to the character's internal monologues. For example, Jeri considers that she should not continue her relationship with Rusty. As part of her argument, she rehearses in her head all the same points her boyfriend in Utah just gave her over the phone. In the next scene, Rusty thinks that he should disappear and never have a relationship with Jeri, using all the same arguments. When Jeri and Rusty next meet, they both vocalize all these same objections. The relationship has obvious problems, so why torture the reader with tiresome repetition that holds the story at a standstill rather than advancing the plot?
Often, Poulson seems so driven by his need to overexplain that he allows chapters to ramble on long after the chapter's logical end. For 200 pages, Jeri follows through on her promise to find Rusty. Suddenly, Rusty has the tables turned when Chum kidnaps Jeri, and Rusty makes the promise, "I'll find you" (238). The chapter should end here. Poulson has already demonstrated the deep commitment associated with these words. Instead, Poulson blathers on with additional details that weaken the emotional impact of Rusty's determination:
[Rusty] promised that he would do all he could to find Jeri. He would even take Chum's life if he had to. Yes, he would do anything necessary in order to rescue her. He would not fail unless he died himself in his attempt to save her. If he did find her and if he came out of it alive, then he would get out of her life, for he was nothing but bad luck to her. He loved her, but she could never love him in return, nor should she, he thought. He was not good enough for her, and he never would be. (238)
With this paragraph, Poulson not only diminishes the simple effectiveness of, "I'll find you," but he also perpetuates his characters' noxious self-abasing internal monologue. And still the chapter doesn't end there. You have to read another half page of unessential dialogue between Rusty and a police lieutenant before the chapter finally gives up the ghost.
Poulson's writing threw me out of the story so many times, that I never really had an opportunity to suspend disbelief. His characters speak a strange combination of formal English and 1950s slang. At one point Rusty says to Chum "Why, good grief man" (22). I understand Poulson's desire to avoid foul prison language, but "good grief" does not belong in a modern-day, youthful prison inmate's mouth.
Somewhere about the middle of the book, the narrator suddenly editorializes about how coincidences don't really exist and everything has a purpose. I don't mind an editorializing narrator. The movie Magnolia uses this effect particularly well, but it starts out with the narrator using this voice. Poulson sets no precedents for the narrator jumping into editorial mode, but by this point Poulson had forced me so far outside the story that no stylistic gaffe could have made my experience much worse.
I don't think I can recommend I'll Find You for much more than a sleeping aide.
