Review by Victor Volkman
Every generation born in the U.P. has to find its own way, that’s just a cold, hard fact of life. Generational wealth in the form of inherited land comes with its own special burden of care. Families across our peninsula struggle with how and whether any given piece of land can stay in the family, whether it’s a hunting camp, family house, or farm. In J.D. Austin’s debut novel “The Last Huck”, we zoom in on such a struggle between three men in the youngest generation of the Kinnunen family who are in their early 20s. Specifically, a lingonberry farm perched on a bluff of land outside of Liminga in the heart of the Copper Country—12 miles northwest of Houghton. The action takes place mostly over an extended weekend of drinking, drugs, and a family history of violence. Our protagonists are Nik, his older brother Jakob (currently serving time in Illinois), and older cousin Peter. The three, who ran in a pack during their formative years, have jointly inherited this farm carved out in the space of a generation by their beloved Uncle Jussi with some help from Hannu, Nik and Jakob’s father. Throughout the book, ghosts of their collective past, extending even into previous generations, will color their conflict.
As the book opens just past the housing crash of 2008, we find Peter, a former mortgage-backed securities pusher, has been unemployed for about six months and cash is running low. And if we’re being honest, his high-flying lifestyle and even higher flying cocaine habit are primarily to blame. As always in America, when you are uninsured you know you are just one medical bill away from bankruptcy. Peter’s son Olli is heading into an uncertain medical crisis and cash may be needed in a hurry. It is on just such a pretense that Peter has talked Nik into coming out for “one last huck” up to the Copper Country for a long weekend of partying with pals. During these days, a lifetime of memories will come to a head as the struggle of will we or won’t we sell the farm and split the proceeds three ways.
NIk and Peter begin this epic road trip up from Milwaukee. Nik is a working-class carpenter and is ill at ease in Peter’s high-priced condo where they meet up. Peter’s wife Tina is stressed out by their son’s unknown, not completely diagnosed medical condition, and has no use for Nik. By contrast, Nik’s frugality is the polar opposite of his spendthrift cousin Peter. Nik is too broke to buy a car, but on the other hand, he lives within his means. All of the setup is literally just what we learn in the first chapter or two. Throughout this long weekend, the novel seamlessly flashes back to the lives of their Finnish ancestors from 1901, to the 1913 Copper Country strike, the depression, and post-war periods.
J.D. Austin really brings a sense of place to all of his writing, putting you in the scene with subtle details that always read true to life. In fact, both his sense of locale and his ability to portray men living in quiet desperation reminded me immediately of Joseph D. Haske’s multi-generational tale “North Dixie Highway”, which is a modern classic that visits similar themes of substance abuse, trauma, and violence. Austin has a landscape painter’s eye for detail, I wanted to share just one passage, which is Nik’s lament when he realizes the true cost of the abandonment of his inheritance:
And now, standing at the edge of the first patch, looking out over the little farm that took twenty years to bring to life, Niklas’ heart was torn over one certainty: the chokecherries had won. And within Niklas, deep in his breast, he felt the need to bring it back to life, to massage the land back into fertility, to pick the weeds in the dirt on his knees and pour his own sweat into fruit bearing plants; to be an agent of life, and of growth, for if he didn’t something larger than any one man who’d helped bring the orchard to life in the first place would be lost. His father’s dream of years ago would be forever fumbled by his sons. And then the wind rose and the flutes in the tops of the trees came to life—one single, wavering note, like the call of an airy loon, beckoning from beyond the veil. And Niklas knew he could not sell this land.
At times, Austin seems to have a deeper grasp of the U.P. culture than I do myself. So naturally, I had to ask him, how does a guy from St. Louis, Missouri absorb the history and culture of the Keweenaw so quickly and with such depth?
J.D. Austin
“So my answer has to begin with my hero, John Steinbeck, whose own work was so closely tied with the Salinas Valley in California. I began writing when I was nineteen and moved to the Houghton when I was twenty. When I came here, and especially once I got to know some of my neighbors and coworkers of Finnish and Cornish descent, I couldn’t help but think and write about the UP and the Keweenaw in the way that Steinbeck wrote about the Salinas Valley. The Finns here have such an intimate, at times difficult, and always tumultuous and romantic relationship with the land, climate, and natural resources of rural northern Michigan. I feel so drawn to the erosion of the Finnish people’s relationship with the land here and their own family stories as technology and economic pressures mount day by day. For me, writing has always begun with inspiration from a voice, and I felt and still feel like my developing voice fits the Keweenaw like Steinbeck’s did the Salinas Valley (or Flannery O’Connor’s Georgia, or Jay McInerny’s NYC, or Sue Harrison’s Eastern UP, etc.).”
Austin’s answer confirmed an essential truth I’ve always held: “The greatest writers of literature are the greatest readers of literature”. I found “The Last Huck” to be a visceral and emotionally true story of how the legacy of one immigrant family reverberates down to the scions of the latest generation. It is a story of loyalty, love, and the importance of taking care of your people, often leavened with a wry twist. The ups and downs of the Kinnunen family will resonate with any Yooper, no matter how many winters they’ve endured. It’s a book that I’m going to keep coming back to because I get something new on each subsequent read.
