PINE TREE STATE

THE FIRE BALLOON
By Ruth Moore
347 pp. Nobleboro, Maine:
Blackberry Books. $15.

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

“If everything’s so lovely in Massachusetts, why don’t they just stay there?”
Theo, from The Fire Balloon

Ah, Massachusetts! All that separates it from Maine is New Hampshire, a slip of a state that seems as insubstantial as a ghost, a state to be hurried through on the way to someplace else. Many Mainers wonder why New Hampshire exists at all, and I expect that if the chance arose, they would gladly cede it to Vermont, a state that Mainers unabashedly and unreservedly love. I am happy to report that this love is reciprocated by Vermonters, and Maine and Vermont might be the only two states in the Union to hold each other in such high esteem and affection.

Massachusetts is quite another story. To some extent, the relationship between Maine and Massachusetts mirrors the relationship the United States has with England. Maine was once a part of Massachusetts, and although Maine gained independence in 1820, there is still an uneasy relationship between the two. From the Bay State’s point of view, Maine is an upstart rural state where the natives are unsophisticated and ungrateful for all that the Parent State has done for it. From the Pine Tree State’s point of view, Massachusetts is the Babylon of New England, slick, rude, and overbearing, all too willing to take advantage of Maine’s people and its natural resources. For Mainers, Massachusetts is a state that produces conflicting emotions, scorn and envy, admiration and resentment, and these emotions produce a clash that seems to have simmered through the decades right through to the twenty-first century. Even today, tourists from Massachusetts are the ultimate personification of people who are “from away.”

In Ruth Moore’s excellent novel The Fire Balloon (first published in 1948), this conflict between those who are from away and those who live year round on the Maine coast makes its appearance in the very first chapter and continues as a distinct melody throughout the entire book. Theoline and Wesley Sewell, sister and brother, react in very different ways to the wealthy Beacon family who comes to small Granite Hook, Maine, each summer. Feisty, defiant Theo resents the Beacons and wants nothing to do with them, especially with the children, Felix and Jane, who are about the same age as Theo and Wesley. At the same time, Theo longs for the life and the comforts that Felix and Jane have, at first the toys and later, as they become teenagers, the clothes and the lifestyle. This longing pulls at Theo until it becomes a sort of unfulfilled quest, and although she never caters to the Beacons, the longing leads her in a direction that almost causes her to lose her bearings. Almost.

On the other hand, Wesley, who views himself as a “smooth type,” thinks the Beacons are the best thing that ever happened to him and Granite Hill, and they represent a one-way ticket out of the small fishing village. Wesley does his best to ingratiate himself into their world and, to some extent, succeeds. However, even though Wesley at first doesn’t realize it, the Beacons view him not as an equal but instead as hired help, a companion for Felix as well as a “boy of all trades” who will help Mrs. Beacon in the garden and maintain the various boats and equipment that belong to the family. When the novel begins, Wes feels “a warm glow of loyalty and gratitude to the Beacons—something he couldn’t talk about to anyone, but which was there for him to hide behind.”

Although The Fire Balloon begins with a sort of prologue that takes place in 1941, when Theo and Wes are still young children, the book’s main events run from April to September of 1947, when they are teenagers. As is often the case with teenagers, Theo and Wes have no clear notion of who they are, what they want to do, and where they belong. With great empathy, Moore captures the yearning and the inner turmoil that comes with being a teenager “stuck” in a small town. Theo and Wes are like birds fluttering against a net, and the reader roots and aches for them as they make bad choices and become ever more entangled. We want Wes to come to his senses and tear himself away from the Beacons. When Theo falls in love with the handsome Howard Thurlow, a man so obviously wrong for the girl that it makes us afraid for her, we want to shake Theo by the shoulders and say “wake up!”

Over the course of the novel, Theo and Wes do indeed “wake up,” and The Fire Balloon becomes a bildungsroman as it charts their stormy journey from April through September. If this were all that The Fire Balloon did, then it would be more than enough. Moore has such a keen understanding of Theo and Wes that we would be more than happy to focus our entire attention on them. However, Moore does something that only a few artists are able to do. With skill and dexterity, she tells the story from an astonishing number of points of views and characters (I counted well over a dozen) so that what emerges is a rich tapestry of the Sewell family, their friends, enemies, and acquaintances as well as Granite Hook itself. Here’s just a brief sampling of the many characters: Gram Sarah, the Sewell matriarch, who is by turns mean and tender; her son Morgan, a tightfisted workaholic, who nonetheless loves his wife and child; her other son Sylvanus, laconic yet harried by his needy children, especially Theo and Wes; Phoebe, Sylvanus’s wife, who has been a housewife for so long that she has forgotten how much she hates housework; and Roger Drummey, the middle-aged invalid who is genuinely in love with Theo and who has a terror of a wife. I’ve left out Uncle Wheat, Job Carter, Foley Craddock, and Emily Sewell, as well as several others.

All of the characters have their faults, many of them are exasperating, and none of them are what you would call dear or quaint. Yet, even at their worst—and at times they are very bad—Moore makes us feel sympathy and affection for the characters. Moore’s ability to successfully navigate so many points of view reminds me of the film director John Sayles and his movie Sunshine State. It is a rare but dazzling feat that few artists can actually pull off. Those who try usually produce an unsatisfactory work that feels fragmented and unfocused.

But not Moore. The Fire Balloon is so tight and complete that I stayed up far later than I should have to finish it, and when I was done, I felt enlarged. I must admit I am drawn to artists like Moore, to those who have a keen, cleared-eyed view of human nature and people, yet who have great affection for them as well. It is far easier to be either a misanthrope or a sentimentalist. Moore, who died in 1989, was neither, and The Fire Balloon is a reflection of a broad, generous mind. 

 

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