Fateful Mornings

Henry Farrell #2

by Tom Bouman

Tom Bouman’s Dry Bones in the Valley won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times hailed it as “beautifully written,” and the Washington Post called it a “mesmerizing and often terrifying story.”

In Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, summer has brought Officer Henry Farrell nothing but trouble. Heroin has arrived with a surge in burglaries and other crime. When local carpenter Kevin O’Keeffe admits that he shot a man and that his girlfriend, Penny, is missing, the search leads the small-town cop to an industrial vice district across state lines that has already ensnared more than one of his neighbors. With the patience of a hunter, Farrell ventures into a world of shadow beyond the fields and forests of home.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult Fiction

357 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2017

About the author

Tom Bouman’s first Henry Farrell novel, Dry Bones in the Valley, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in upstate New York.

Reviews

[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without doubt, this is a beautifully written mystery set in Wild Thyme, a rural place in Pennsylvania, policed by Henry Farrell. There are dark regional omens such as rise in burglaries and the arrival of heroin, and low income poor areas, like the Heights, that are proving to be dangerous to frequent. Heroin addicts, Kevin O'Keeffe and Penny Pellings, have had their baby daughter, Eolande, put into foster care. Kevin is struggling with his memories when he tells Henry that he shot a man and Penny has disappeared, although there was blood and patches of her hair in their trailer. This is not a fast paced read, it is a slow paced, character driven story that meanders, with an impressive sense of location, culture and the seasons. It is a read which at times is more interested in looking at people and the rhythms of nature in depth, and the crime feels incidental.

Henry investigates, venturing into areas that do not welcome cops and across statelines with the stealth of the hunter that he is. His wife is dead, and he still hasn't come to terms with it. His personal life revolves around a married woman, Shelly Bray, which he knows is a mistake and so it proves to be. He is close friends with Ed, who runs a construction company specialising in the use of retrieved timber and deploying traditional and time consuming techniques, and his wife, Liz, the local GP. When Kevin who works for Ed is locked up in prison, Henry moonlights by working for Ed so that he can complete a contract. Ed, Liz and Henry play in a band, The Country Slippers, with Henry's instrument being the fiddle. Henry comes to find himself slowly gelling into a relationship with Julie, a woman he works with as a cop and in his construction job with Ed. Amidst all this is the hunt for Penny, a closer in depth look at Kevin to understand precisely what he did and saw, the enigma that is Sage Buckles, and the emergence of a dangerous man who abducts people and is responsible for killing a cop.

I enjoyed the slow pace of this book that is just soaked with rural vibes and real lives. Henry is a flawed and grieving man who is determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Penny and is undeterred that it takes some time to do so. The author gives us a good idea of the people and issues that arise in many rural areas of the US. We observe the jurisdictional policing nightmares, whilst at the same time seeing the team work that takes place when cases cross statelines. This may not be a novel for everyone, I can imagine many who will be frustrated with the slow pace and a plot that is not driven solely by the crime aspects of the story. However, if you are looking for beautiful and atmospheric writing, rural culture and a focus on characters, then this is for you. Many thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC.

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book boring and tedious. I love the imagery of the setting (rural Pennsylvania) and the notion that the plot focused on fracking (environmentalist in me). Other than that, I did not like the book at all. The plot was hard to follow and boring. The characters were depressing. I did not like the author's writing style at that much. Sincere thanks to Netgalley for the advanced readers copy of the book.

[Jeanette]

This has no rating for me. Although I read past the half way point, I defer to give it a bad rating.

It's just not to my taste in reading AT ALL. And the physical prose for Wild Thyme locale should entrance or enthrall, but within all the rest of the copy, it just did not suffice to overcome the "voice".

Some of the thoughts made by this Henry Farrell? Not a protagonist that I would want to know or would I care to read this many pages within his lens. Not crude, not evil- just snide trivial and sophomoric! Way too juvenile in petty judgments. I read book #1 and thought it didn't show Henry in this slant HALF as much as this one does. The more I know him here in this book, the less I want to know him. LOL!

On to the next. And better.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, Officer Henry Farrell is the law -- the only cop the town has. Kevin O'Keefe is mostly a druggie and he reports his girlfriend Penny missing. The story meanders along with many sub-plots.
The author's words are quite descriptive and the countryside is very pretty. I liked the way the author developed Henry's character but the mystery was difficult for me to follow.

I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fateful Mornings is the first book I’ve read by Tom Bouman, but I’ve had Dry Bones in the Valley on my bookshelves since it came out, just waiting to be read. I’ll definitely be picking it up at some point having read this one.

In Fateful Mornings, we meet Officer Henry Farrell, the central character in these books. Struggling after the death of his wife, he is carrying out an illicit affair with a married woman. Along with this, there is trouble in Wild Thyme. When he is called on to investigate the disappearance of Penny, the girlfriend of an old acquaintance, things take a turn for the worse for Officer Farrell.

Situated on the edge of the woods, Penny’s home is on the precipice of a place where there is most definitely something sinister going on. When Farrell starts to nose around, he ends up finding more than he bargained for.

I don’t want to say much more for fear of giving anything away. Fateful Mornings is a slow and intricate book, with a great sense of location and a wide-ranging cast of characters. The author has an excellent eye for detail, and his prose is second to one. I read Fateful Mornings is a day as it was a compulsive and enveloping read.

Recommended!

[Kerry Clair · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book incredibly boring and tedious. It didn't get good until perhaps the last 30 pages. By that time I was only still reading because curiosity as to who did it kept me there but that's about it. Very dull and slow moving book.

[Robert Intriago]

What a disappointment after a very good first book. had a hard time making head or tail after reading about half. It wonders all over the place with absolutely no direction. Did not finish, therefore no rating.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was segmented, choppy, and lacked flow.

It was bogged down with information about the city, counties, and locale. Which could have been overlooked; except, the details provided were dull and often irrelevant to the storyline.

Actually, the same can be said about most of the side stories. They were uninteresting and added nearly nothing to the plot.

There are about 275 pages of mundane narrative, until an interesting character in Coleman Tod is introduced. However, it's short lived and the conclusion of the story and novel are as lackluster as the first 275 pages.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did, but between the clunky flow and cluttered story building I just couldn't get pulled in and lost in the novel the way I would have wanted.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and quietly ponderous, this second outing for Henry Farrell loses a little something of the first's freshness, but like a good cheese, it gains strength and maturity with age.

Bouman's brilliance is in his use of the landscape as narrative - in a contemplative, procedural way, we know and feel the fields, the woods, the wind and water with Henry, and just as viscerally we feel the dirty backlot carparks, the houses built under freeways, the soulless mansions and the dying city centres.

And these things are integral to the telling of the story, just as they're integral to Henry's character and the lives of the people he deals with. As with Dry Bones in the Valley, we're seeing a community, a county, being reclaimed by the nature it is so aggressively trying to control.

Natural language appears throughout the novel. Thoughts making their way through a character's mind will come out jumbled, half-formed, incoherent; they'll end a sentence with an open question ("Are you coming tonight, or?"). It's unusual to find this mode of speaking written down in novels and I think it should happen more often, because it's such a great reflection of how we all actually behave. But maybe it's more powerful in its sparsity.

I'm not keen on Shelly's husband having a hold over Henry in terms of its proximity to soapy dramatics, so I can only hope that, like the promise of a lady deputy at the end of the first book, this threat is quietly neutralised in the first few pages of the next. Because if you're reading Bouman for blueprint plotting and melodramatic stakes-upping, you're doing it wrong.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to like this book: 1) set in rural Pennsylvania; 2) impact of fracking on community; 3) thought 1st novel was readable.

However, this book really disappointed. I plodded through it just to see if it got better, (It didn't)

[Craig Sisterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

We’ve had to wait a little while for a sequel to Bouman’s exquisite, mesmerizing debut Dry Bones in the Valley (2014), which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and the LA Times Prize, among other accolades.

But at last we’re back alongside Office Henry Farrell on his beat among the backwoods and byways of rural Pennsylvania. Farrell is having a trouble-filled summer in Wild Thyme. While he’d rather be hunting turkey, drinking IPAs, and playing his fiddle, instead he’s busy dealing with the arrival of heroin, a surge in burglaries, and an adulterous fling from which he can’t seem to extract himself.

When local handyman Kevin O’Keeffe’s drug-addled girlfriend disappears, and O’Keeffe gives a rambling semi-confession to maybe shooting a man, Farrell’s life gets even more complicated. He’s pulled in all sorts of directions by the various powers and influences in his community, as he tries to sort the truth from everything that obscures. And there's a lot that obscures. His investigations take him across the state border to the backcountry equivalent of vice-filled back alleyways.

Fateful Mornings is an interesting, at times frustrating, read.

Bouman’s elegant prose and knack for evoking backcountry life in vivid detail is again on show, but this sophomore effort lacks the tension and narrative drive of his debut.

Dry Bones in the Valley earned comparisons to rural noir masters like John Hart and James Lee Burke, but in Fateful Mornings Bouman veers more towards James Sallis territory, with formless and meandering plotting, in among lots of lovely description and characterization. He doesn’t quite, yet, have Sallis' touch for making that work, but there’s still plenty of quality here.

The plotline is not so much two steps forward, one step back, as one step forward, three to the side, circle back around, and bow to your partner. Bouman's writing is elegant, poetic, and unique, and there are interesting strands of philosophy and different ways of looking at the world threaded throughout, but I can imagine that many readers, whether crime fans or not, may find the storyline's looseness off-putting. I couldn't quite make up my own mind about it, but in the end felt like I admired what Bouman was trying to do rather than fully being engaged in the tale.

[Katherine Younkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Farrell is a small-town policeman who is a friend to many in rural Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania and someone who even those of the wrong side of the law respect. Once he starts an investigation he won’t stop until he finds answers, no matter how messy the situation becomes.
When an off-the-grid property caretaker named Kevin O’Keefe reports his girlfriend, Penny missing, Henry first suspects Kevin himself. The caretaker has been known to have violent arguments with Penny. Kevin also admits to partying the night before he came back to find his girlfriend missing and his trailer ransacked. Unfortunately, Kevin isn’t reliable. Partying for him means drinking and smoking dope.

As Henry delves further into the investigation he finds many troubling facts. It’s highly doubtful Penny would just run away because she was trying to do what she could to get her special-needs daughter back from foster care. Henry’s investigation leads him to the case of a kidnapped woman and a patrol officer’s death. He confronts heroin dealers and a vicious killer.

The reason I like Tom Bouman’s Henry Farrell novels is the writing is on another level from a basic mystery. Henry is a person you’d want to know, an everyday guy placed in hair-raising circumstances. Bouman writes with a sharp wit and is a keen observer of human nature. Readers of Craig Johnson’s western mystery series and those who enjoy well-written mysteries should enjoy this book.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this follow up to Dry Bones, however I was let down. Rural Pennsylvania/New York setting with Henry Farell returning trying to find out what has happened to a young heroin addicted woman that has disappeared or been killed. This book was very, very slow for me with no flow ever really developing until the last 50 pages or so and even then it was pretty blotchy. Barely a 3 star rating for me as I am chalking this book up as a sophomore failure.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3)-I was really drawn to the characters, setting and story of "Dry Bones in the Valley", the first book featuring Henry Farrell, an older, low level lawman living In rural northern Pennsylvania. In this follow up, he is investigating a disappearance, playing his fiddle, enjoying his beer and trying to sort out his surprisingly complicated personal life. The characters and setting are still appealing, but I found the "mystery" part of the plot muddled and hard to follow this time around.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I had a little trouble engaging myself into the story. I actually put the book down for a few weeks to read more uplifting books.
The story was dark and the author was good at depicting a wasteland type setting. Although I tried, I had trouble identifying with any of the characters. I found that the main story moved slowly and the disconnected side stories made it difficult to follow. I have not read anything else this author has written, but I see that he has a great following, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. I won this book through GoodReads and will register it with bookcrossing.com and pass it on to a more appreciative reader.

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bouman's first novel, Dry Bones of the Valley, was a stunner, with prose you wrote down or got out of your chair to read to your spouse. This one... not quite so much. But still an order of magnitude better than the industrially-churned out crap that keeps popping up on my benighted public library's webpage. Henry Farrell is still morose, brooding, and alone (except for a really unfortunate inclination to jump at the booty-call texts he gets from a local married woman. Of course it ends badly...). He hunts, he drinks, he drives around in his truck, he plays a soulful bluegrass fiddle. And he wanders around, into, and through the violence, abuse, cruelty and misery of the residents of Wild Thyme township, centering around the disappearance of the female half of a pathetic couple ensnared in poverty, drugs and alcohol. Bouman's best gift is his portrait of these folks: rural, poor, enmeshed in each other's networks of cousins, siblings, in-laws, bosses... everyone is connected somehow. It sounds depressing, and it is - sometimes - but he also sees their humanity, that no one wants to rat out their brother-in-law even if he is dealing; the anguished woman who cries for her missing sister no matter how badly she's hurt her. It's a community of people we don't see, and should. There is also the beauty of the woods, the rivers, the lakes; the music, the work ethic, the legitimate beefs and conflicts.

All that said, this is a tougher read than Dry Bones. The pacing lags, drags, slows, wanders... partly to illustrate how these backwoods crimes and problems drag out because there are too few cops and lawyers, boundaries are blurred, and sometimes just because no one cares enough to pursue. But after a while, after months and seasons pass, all those cousins and strangers and drifters start to get confusing, and it's difficult for the reader to maintain a keen interest either. Farrell meets a woman. That relationship chugs into low gear, but I still gagged on the first spark of passion between them being lit by a dawn deer hunt. The musical scenes, admirably written as they are, don't seem to serve much purpose other than Bouman (also a musician) wanted to write them. A side plot about a building project may interest carpenters, and the language of wood working is often rather poetic and rich, but is peripheral.

Good writing, a vivid and important cultural portrait. A bit slow and rambly, but he does know how to write a corpse.

[Ross Cumming · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second novel in the Henry Farrell series by Tom Bouman and I enjoyed this one as much as I did his debut. However only after finishing it did I notice that it seems to have divided opinion on Goodreads by readers of the first novel.
Henry is a Sheriff in the rural county of Wild Thyme in Pennsylvania. He works pretty much on his own and is very much part of the local community, knowing most of the locals pretty well and therefore he sometimes has to tread lightly in order to keep the peace and at the same time, see that justice is served. He's an ex-vet and also lost his wife to cancer but is carrying out a clandestine affair with a local married woman. Kevin O'Keefe is a local carpenter with a drink problem and when he turns up confessing that his herion addicted partner Penny Pellings has gone missing and he also thinks he shot someone during a two day bender, it takes Henry on a long and convoluted journey to try and seek out the truth.
Henry enlists the aid of several local Police agencies and also gets himself unwittingly entangled in an undercover operation in the town of Binghampton. In his private life his affair starts to unravel messily but he fills his spare time moonlighting for a local builder and playing his fiddle in a small bluegrass group.
I did enjoy this novel and a lot of the reasons some readers disliked it were for the very same reasons I liked it. The story is long and convoluted and at times Henry's investigation just leads to a dead end and it is seemingly unrelated events that take place that reignite the investigation. Henry also has his own unique style of policing and probably drinks and smokes weed too much for his own good. I also like the descriptions of the rural settings and how this landscape is being torn apart by the fracking that is taking place and also how drugs are also seeping into the rural communities from the cities and destroying the families of the users. If I have a criticism of the novel it is that there are a lot of minor characters and at times I did get confused as to who was who but that is maybe an 'age' thing on my part ! I would certainly welcome further books in the series as I would like to know where Henry goes from here.

[Douglas Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Bouman’s first book, Dry Bones in the Valley, this novel focuses on Henry Farrell, a cop in rural Pennsylvania, where “[w]hatever coal was worth taking was gone, leaving odd right angles in the land and pools of strange color and unknown depth.” What’s the matter? A missing woman, small-time corporate greed, and the DA’s in a hurry. And since Henry has “[n]o truck, no body, no weapon” and not much else to do, he spends all his time on this case. The first slow, swampy hundred or so pages do zip for the plot, instead developing Henry: cop, reader, fiddler, hunter, widower. He’s not some bullshit Renaissance Man/Genius Bruiser, but rather a normal dude who smokes the occasional bowl. He’s a little taken with the missing Penny, “was reminded that her beauty was rare and startling for the area…like finding a morel or an arrowhead.” All signs in Penny’s disappearance point to baby daddy Kevin (both parents lost custody because of drugs). Though they are described as “sweet, helpless, a little bit deluded” about parenting, Henry smells something that’s off. In no particular order, Henry finds out: Penny was kept prisoner in her home, was somehow involved in a prostitution ring (which Henry inadvertently busts up), and was also cheating on Kevin (my bet is on the lawyer/landlord). And that shit’s just for starters. What’s with the dude they pulled out of the river? VERDICT Most of the writing is LOL funny (e.g., “[o]f all tradesmen, roofers are the most villainous degenerates in America”) and a lot of it plain ‘ol truth, as in, “it wasn’t good luck that kept that truck on the road…but the absence of bad.” Who hasn’t owned that truck?

Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.

[Brooke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Story wanders all over the place. Too many details about places we only see for a couple of minutes and to many characters. Boring. I've decided I don't really like Henry, so if any more are written, I won't be reading them.

[Hamlen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, this novel is terrible.

If you want a mystery / thriller the author's philosophical musings get in the way. If you want a connection to the characters it better be the reconstructed barns his main character works on. But, if you want a meditation on reclaiming barns, forget that, as it gets lost in the incoherent mumbling. Maybe bluegrass is your thing. That seems forced, too.

It's not so bad that I stopped reading it. Bouman can turn a phrase. His analogies we well constructed. I kept hoping he would settle on an approach that was more focused.

He has the skill to move the tempo from mind numbing plodding to light speed so fast you get dizzy. But, he needs to get that process under control. He uses it to advance the story after failing to do it with all the other muttering. That's a lot of telling (rather than showing) in a novel that meanders through seasons and townships in the rust belt of Pennsylvania.

[Nicole Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fateful Mornings by Tom Bouman is a crime fiction book with plenty of characters and twists. I like the main character, Henry Farrell, a one man Law Enforcement Unit, in rural Pennsylvania bordering New York State. Bouman's descriptions of the rural landscape were realistic and at times eloquent.

The plot had several turning points and at times I got lost in the characters' conversations. The novel would be easier to read if the chapters were shorter and more concise. I want to know which character is speaking. I don't mind reading: "Get off my porch!" said Nicole. Writing in the prose style can be confusing to the reader.

[David Sayles · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a couple requirements for fiction books. I have to like the main character and the dialogue and plot have to be plausible. I did not like the main character in this book and found his drinking and drug tolerance to be questionable for a police officer, even in a small town. Dialogue such as "Don't leave town" worked in the 20th century TV shows but made me laugh out loud in this book. Having affairs in a small town and thinking they will be kept secret can only be believed by people who have never lived in a small town. In general, the story lacked depth and in too many parts was just very unlikely.

[Connie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very excited to see another book by this author. His first book in the series is excellent. This one has the same wonderful descriptions of northeastern PA as the first and the main character, police officer Henry Farrell is once again involved with a married woman and still playing his fiddle with his friends when not working cases. The problem is the story of a drug addicted young woman's disappearance which meanders everywhere and seems totally lacking in direction. I finished this because I kept hoping it would get better. I will try reading this author's next book and hope its more like his first.
Not recommended!

[Jody Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having exhausted Craig Johnson's Longmire series, I was looking for something similar to read. I don't even recall how I stumbled across this title. While there are similarities,-a widowed lawman, the rural setting given enough space to become a character itself, the main characters are not the same. Bouman describes a rich background for Henry Farrell and paints vivid details into his life outside of the law. I can't wait for the next installment.

[Justine · Rating 1 out of 5]

An utter disappointment. Plot meandered all over the place, the mystery was boring, and the protagonist grated on my nerves. (He did not in Book One- though I may have been lenient.) I want to read more set in my home turf of rural northeast PA (the author does still get this mostly right), but not like this. Oh well.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book from this author. I was quite impressed with the elegance of the prose (even though I found it cryptic at times). However, I found the story meandering and the characters quite unlikeable making it very difficult to engage with the story.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it very difficult to relate to the principal character in the book, & the plot just didn’t hang together very well in several places. Some judicious editing could have greatly improved the book in sections where things rambled without clear purpose.

[Ashlee Ciora · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was not impressed with the book. I read it to finish it but was confused by the storyline. It picked up finally in the last 2-3 chapters and had hoped it would be more riveting and thrilling but it was not. A disappointing ending.

[Jc · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read 2/3 of the book and I still don’t understand what is going on, who is who and what they are looking for. The book is confused and confusing, new characters appear out of nowhere, what the cop does and why is unexplained and all of a sudden you get a tutorial on carpentry.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Farrell is the lone policeman who patrols the back roads of Wild Thyme township in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. Mostly his job isn’t too demanding. He can park his vehicle and spend time enjoying the local lakes and forests without anyone much missing him. He can even take on an illegal after-hours job. He helps dismantle old barns and salvage the wood for new barns designed by his best friend, wordworking genius Ed Brennan.
In Bouman’s fine descriptions of Henry’s world, you can just about smell the trees and ponds along with Henry, who narrates most chapters. In Henry and several other principal characters in this rural noir novel, Bouman has created well-rounded, complex individuals. Henry also plays fiddle in a roots music trio, for example.
These bucolic images coexist uneasily alongside the dirty business of hydraulic fracking and the even dirtier practice of drug dealing, which are ravaging the natural and human resources of Wild Thyme. As a result, law enforcement in the township is about to face some serious challenges. At first, it’s an uptick in burglaries and motor vehicle accidents, which Henry attributes to the rise in drug abuse.
But then a young woman goes missing. Penny Pellings is a sometimes heroin user who lives in a trailer with her boyfriend. The pair has lost custody of their infant daughter. Though they want her back, they aren’t on a road that can lead to that outcome.
The search for Penny Pellings requires the casting of a rather wide net, which takes Henry out of his jurisdiction. He has a thoughtful, amiable demeanor that helps him interact well with nearby departments that have many more resources than he does in Wild Thyme. So many crime novels focus on the turf battles and stonewalling between police agencies, it’s refreshing to see real cooperation.
Investigating Penny’s fate is an almost geological endeavor. Each layer excavated reveals another, with its own mysteries. In the end, the resolution of her story seems almost secondary to the 360-degree picture of the community of Wild Thyme that the author has created.
Bouman won an Edgar Award in 2015 for his first novel, Dry Bones in the Valley, also featuring Henry Farrell.