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This book makes you want to get out of the car next time you're pulled over and thank your local state trooper for risking his or her life every day to keep your state safe. Seriously. Why? Because King has created characters that at best are noble heroes and at worst are achingly human. The troopers of the Pennsylvania State Police Troop D have wives and kids and drink and smoke and know they should spend more time with the former and less with the latter. They have losses and divorces and tragedies but also births and grandkids and shining moments of bravery, comeraderie, and friendship. The troopers are more than colleagues. There is a bond in Troop D that is like family.
And that bond, you find when reading FROM A BUICK 8, is as crucial a force in the story as the Buick itself. It counteracts the weird light shows and strange disappearances and hideous trunk births that the impounded car out in Shed B behind the trooper station produces at an irregular but fairly often basis. The book is told from various character viewpoints, alternating between past and present, as Sergeant Sandy Dearborn and his fellow troopers try to help a fallen trooper's son (Ned) deal with his father's death. Sandy, Tony, and Curt (Ned's father), as well as Huddie and Arky and Eddie and Shirley and George and a host of other troopers come and gone over the years, are connected by a common secret - the strange car that shouldn't work, but yet serves as a portal to another dimension. As the story about finding and dealing with all the oddities presented by the Buick unfolds, Sandy tries to get Ned to understand that sometimes there is no explanation. The Buick, like life and importantly for Ned, like death, presents mysteries that can't always be solved. Sometimes things just happen, like accidents on the highway that strip boys of their fathers and fathers of their skin. Sometimes the unthinkable happens on the road and troopers at a loss to explain compound the senseless tragedy. Sometimes people go missing to God-knows-where and don't ever come back. But what I think Sandy discovers is that sometimes there are answers. Maybe there are no accidents. Just because you can't immediately see an answer, doesn't mean it isn't there. What I think both Sandy and Ned both realize is that sometimes you can only find something when you stop looking so hard at it.
This book works on an emotional level most effectively when King shows us COPS unsensored. These men love their job and are loyal to it, but sometimes they are afraid. Sometimes they make mistakes. They know the job will be the end of them someday and a part of that always weighs on them. Sure, they may not die "in the line of duty," exactly, but there are divorces and infidelities and highway wrecks and alcoholism and suicides and sickness.... In essence, the job sinks into them. One way or another, it determines their ends. They are connected - to it, to each other. Things come full circle, and maybe it isn't just happenstance that brings them round again. The pull of the work, much like the pull of the Buick, is undeniable. The Buick, like their jobs, becomes a part of them, sometimes dangerous, but usually just a part of everyday life they accept and are used to. But it is always there, and it shapes the course of their lives.
The book seems to revolve a lot around accidents and purposes - what is accidental and coincidental as opposed to purposeful or connected in an inevitable chain of events. The true horror of the book isn't the occasional monster that comes out of the Buick (although they are wondrously strange). It's the notion that maybe nothing is really an accident. Since we can't always see the sinister purpose connecting the seemingly unconnected, there is nothing we can do to prevent or stop it. All we can do is just accept that we can't explain or change it. I think Sandy and Ned both come to understand (from different ends of the argument) that the most - the best - we can ever do is accept that sometimes the answers we need just come in due time, usually when we aren't looking so hard to find them. Sometimes they don't come at all, and in those cases, the best we can do for our own peace of mind (maybe the only active thing we can do) is work on bridging the gaps with the ties that bind us together.
I enjoyed this book - another good one from King. Pick it up, if you get a chance.
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