MR FOOL

In a Texas border town in the early 1970s, a tale of two brothers—one left adrift by his lover, and one returned from familial estrangement—is the center of this compelling novel about identity and the power of family ties.

After avoiding his family for two years, Troy Falconer shows up out of the blue to help his brother Harlan find the woman who broke his heart and robbed him blind: his wife, Bettie. What Harlan doesn’t know is that Troy and Bettie’s paths have crossed before, and his prodigal brother has his own reasons for wanting to find her again.

Where has Troy been for the past two years, and why did he leave? Framing the narrative is his confessional letter to the police, divulging his motives and methods for staying on the move. Troy has been stealing whatever he needs to—cars, money, identities—to disappear from one life to the next, shedding every accessory as he moves between them. He can’t stand to be weighed down with any of his own material possessions; it’s not simply that Troy is a criminal—he has a “calling” or a “condition,” as he calls it, of “having but not owning”. He only wants things when they belong to someone else…and little does Harlan know, that goes for their loved ones too.

As the brothers hit the road to track Bettie down, problems with Harlan’s truck force Troy to steal a car to keep moving. To their shock, a young Mennonite girl, Martha, is hiding in the back. Like the brothers, she’s on the run, but her face is everywhere since she was kidnapped by her father. The Falconers will need all of their wits to outrun him and the police with the dual targets of a missing girl and a stolen car in tow.

The stakes and the risks only rise as Troy and Harlan’s search for Bettie converges with the search for Martha. One of the Falconer brothers will not survive the confrontation, but which one? And who’s the real “Mr. Fool”?

Randy Kennedy has been a reporter at The New York Times for over ten years. In 2001, his column "Tunnel Vision" won the New York State Associated Press Association award for best column. His 2014 book Subwayland is a selection of that column’s best pieces, comprising a journey through the underground world of the New York City subway system and its history. He lives in Brooklyn.