Downtown Owl

Downtown Owl

A novel detailing the events leading up to an unexpected blizzard on February 4, 1984 told through the perspectives of a junior in high school who cannot satisfy his football coach, a 73-year-old retiree who spends his free time reading and drinking coffee with his friends, and a 23-year-old high school teacher who instantly becomes the most exciting and attractive woman in the small town.  There are two additional narrators of the aforementioned football coach who reflects on his predilection for teenage students and a teenager who defines his existence through fighting.

Each of the characters struggles with secrets and their abilities to define their lives in ways that have meaning. 

For Mitch, he cannot fathom why his football coach dislikes him so, and he only longs for the days where he can exist in the non-being of sleep. As he works to cause as little trouble as possible, he recognizes his ability to read the people around him. When he does not quite understand the questions of the exam on 1984, he realizes that his teacher (the same football coach he cannot please) must identify with Winston Smith since it is his favorite book—why else would he like the book unless he saw himself in the character, he muses.

For Horace, the world was formerly more simple, and he longs to be more effective in losing (actually for him winning) bar dice to see who will buy the rounds of coffee in his daily meetings. His group of friends argue over history and politics—just like anyone might—and he looks forward to these meetings more than anything. But despite his daily meetings, he cannot bear to let them know what has happened to him in his life.  

For Julia, she longs to live where she can both be the center of attention and also be somewhere more exciting than Owl, North Dakota. But as the novel progresses, she comes to find herself growing more attracted to the former, one-play star of the Owl football team. But while she recognizes with whom she might be in love, she does not recognize that she loses control of herself through nightly drinking.

But in the end, these daily concerns and worries pale when compared to the power of an unexpected blizzard.