Introduction

“Joanne Proulx’s debut novel is an impressive literary feat. Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet is a pitch-perfect glimpse of that powerful yet paradoxically fragile moment in adolescence when the world is rushing at you and you are rushing at it.”—Katharine Weber, author of Triangle

“Proulx is . . . a talented inhabitor of people unlike herself . . . every new writer so blessed should be cherished.”—Toronto Star

“A narrative rippling with the author’s insight slyly encoded in the hormone itch and cooler-than-thou posturing of a mixed-up teen. . . . Beguiling.”—The Globe and Mail

“Joanne Proulx’s debut novel rocks, and her teenage protagonist, Luke Hunter . . . rules. . . . This is a great book.”—National Post (Canada)

"A contemporary coming of age story that feels authentic to its times. It has some rough language and doesn’t shy away from depicting the kinds of things that a lot of teens do—in other words, they’re not squeaky clean the way the kids are in the Stephenie Meyer Twilight books….what I like about Proulx’s writing is that, throughout the book, the reader never quite knows where she’s going with the various elements of her plot, yet once we get to where she takes us, it all makes perfect sense. And boy, does she get the voice right. Highly recommended.”—Charles de Lint for Fantasy & Science Fiction



When seventeen-year-old Luke Hunter foretells the death of his friend with freakish accuracy, his life gets complicated. Everyone in Stokum, Michigan, his rank little pinprick of a hometown, knows about the premonition and wants to know more. But Luke holds everyone—the local news crew, his parents, his buddy Fang—at arm’s length, telling no one that the death premonitions keep happening. Terrified, he lurches through a personal minefield studded with previously unconsidered existential ponderings, Christian fundamentalists, and a dream girl who his dead friend left behind. Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet is a darkly comic coming-of-age novel that nails contemporary youth culture.

Joanne Proulx’s short stories have been published in literary magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet is her first novel. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

The first time it happened, I was bullshitting. At least, I thought
I was bullshitting. I had no idea I was about to knock my world
on its ass when I opened my mouth that night in Delaney’s basement.
It was October 7, 2002, and like most days in Stokum, the
rank little pinprick of a town where I was born and raised, the
seventh of October unraveled in a completely unmemorable way.
Yeah, as I recall, it was a pretty Stokum kind of day. It wasn’t until
that night that things got weird.
I’d headed over to Todd Delaney’s after dinner, was hanging
with the usual crowd, smoking up and listening to the mindless
techno shit Todd likes. I’m not going to say too much about
Delaney except that his mother was never home, so by the time we
were seventeen his basement pretty much reeked. (When I say his
mother was never home, I mean she was never home. Last time I
saw her, she was headed to a millennium bash with a magnum of
wine tucked under her scrawny arm.) Another thing—so I don’t
go mental calling him Todd, he’s been Fang since first grade when
his adult incisors arrived extra-early and extra-large, leaving the
baby teeth up front cowering like mini-marshmallows between
two he-man tusks. It was a look that caused Fang a fair amount of
grief during his formative years. And he still has a pretty lacerating
smile, so the nickname has some staying power even if he doesn’t.
One
Anyway, the night of the seventh, we were in Fang’s basement
and the air was thick, but we weren’t all chilled out and laughing
at nothing like usual. The weed had a nasty edge and the mood
was sort of grim. I was sitting on the crap plaid couch Delaney’s
mom had rescued from some landfill, being violated by the techno
throb, agonizing over just how trying it was to be friends with a
guy who had such shitty taste in music, which should give you a
bit of insight into where my head was at in those days. Another
impediment to me getting anywhere near a comfortable high was
Dwight Slater, the skank parked beside me on the couch.
I realized the cushions were soft. I realized they tended to roll
toward the low-slung center. Still, I thought my buddy Dwight
could have made a bit more of an effort to stay on his side of the
furniture. But he just kept sloshing into me, his knee, his shoulder,
bumping against mine. Instead of moving over, he’d just give
me a real loose smile, pretending he didn’t know he was pissing me
off, pretending he didn’t know that the only reason he was even
permitted in the basement was that he always brought the weed.
(I’d pretty much hated Dwight since the day he tried to strangle
me. It was back in third grade and Mrs. McNulty, our teacher, had
stepped out of the class for a smoke or something and bam! Slater’s
hands were around my neck. I don’t remember if I’d been hassling
him before she left the room or what. I do remember Dwight
looking completely psycho and his grip being superman tight and
my face getting really, really hot and thinking I was going to die—
I mean, for the first time in my life truly believing I was going to
die—and how, even with Slater squeezing the last breath from my
body, I’d been worried there was something wrong with me
2 Joanne Proulx
because I was way more stunned than scared, which I was sure
wasn’t normal. Anyway, no big deal. Dwight didn’t kill me. What
he did was drop his hands real fast when Mrs. McNulty got back.
And as the blood pounded its way into my head and I gasped for
air, he’d acted like we’d just been fooling around, like the whole
thing was all a big joke. Ha, ha. Slap me on the back. Very funny.
Asshole.)
So Dwight. Yeah. He was definitely part of the lethal brew of
bad dope, bad company and even worse music that got me going
in Delaney’s basement. Normally I lay pretty low and let conversations
roll around me, occasionally tossing in a sarcastic comment
or two just so people don’t think I’m too slow to keep up. But that
night I was fucking Chatty Cathy, man, and I started telling the
whole room this dark tale about how one of us was going to bite
it on the way to school tomorrow, get creamed by a van and be
dead before they knew what hit them. The more I talked, the more
details I spewed and my voice got all authoritative and shit and
pretty soon everyone just sat back and let me roll.
Red van, out-of-state plates, license number BLU 369. There’d
be a busted-up skateboard in the middle of the road and a dead
kid on the sidewalk, head split open, eyes way wide, staring at the
blue, blue sky from a puddle of red, red blood.
I made a show of looking around, let my eyes land on every
sorry piece of gristle in the room, but the name had already settled
into me, so I left the best for last. First I checked out Fang, standing
in the bathroom doorway, one arm resting on the chin-up bar
we’d mounted there a few years back to keep his pipes steely. Even
stoned, Fang seemed nervous, panicked almost, like he’d just been
ANTHEM OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET 3
nailed by the phantom spotlight he’d been running from all his
life. In that light, exposed in a druggy moment of reckoning, we
all considered him for the role of dead man.
Fang looked like a younger, more battered version of Steven
Tyler—the fem lead singer of Aerosmith—but minus the strut.
Totally minus the strut. Fang was all lips and teeth and long hair,
all muscle and sinew and bone. I stared at him, slouched in the
doorway, backlit by the glare of the bathroom light. I didn’t get his
retro rock star look. I didn’t get his music. I didn’t get him
anymore.
Fang shook his head, bouncing the hair from his eyes, and for
just a second we managed to connect. I could see him pushing the
others out, holding them back, so there was just enough room for
us to make contact. “Fuck off, Luke,” he said. I gave him a
knowing smile, a little nod of approval, before moving on to my
next target.
I lingered on Chad Turner, Phil Stroper and a couple of the
other guys, stretching the moment as far as the tension would take
it. I skipped Dwight altogether because a) I couldn’t be bothered
cranking around on the couch to look at him, and b) I didn’t want
to stare into his gob anyway, because every time I did I’d find
myself searching his face, trying to figure out why people, new to
town and whatnot, always got around to asking us the same
moronic question: “Hey, are you two brothers?” Jesus Christ. Me
and Dwight? Retarded second cousins, maybe. But brothers? Jesus.
Stan, who looked nothing like either me or Dwight and was
nowhere near retarded, was sitting in the corner opposite the
computer, having claimed the basement’s only decent chair. He
4 Joanne Proulx
was playing with the handle on the side of the La-Z-Boy, flipping
the footrest up and down, apparently barely tuned in.
“Stan,” I said, and I said it kind of loud so of course he had to
look up. “Tomorrow morning. Eight thirty-seven. The red van
with the out-of-state plates? You go head to head. You lose. You
die.” I looked him straight on, with my face all serious, and I may
have even jabbed a finger in his direction, but he wasn’t having any
of my nonsense, Stan being Stan and all.
First he said something like, “Oooh, you’re really freaking me
out, Luke,” and he gave the lever a final push. The La-Z-Boy
springs snapped to attention. Feet up, fingers laced together
behind his head, he assumed this completely relaxed posture. Real
cool. Real Stan. “You want to know how I know your story is
completely full of shit, Luke? ”
I just shrugged and we locked eyes and had a bit of a smirk-off
while he let his question hang out there. When he’d given everyone
a chance to mull it over, he laid out his theory. “Your story is
full of shit because no one from out of state ever comes to buttfuck
Stokum. Especially in October.”
We all got a good laugh out of that and everyone called me on
my bogus tale and fucking Slater punched me in the arm a little
harder than necessary and then, thankfully, someone sane turned
the music off and the TV on and we watched videos on MTV2 for
a while before heading out.
On my way home from Fang’s that night, I thought about why
I’d stuck Stan in the middle of my man-versus-van scenario. I
figured it was because I knew he would have a good comeback, or
maybe it was because he wasn’t a regular in the cast of misfits who
ANTHEM OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET 5
hung out at Fang’s. I think we all liked to see him squirm once in
a while, just so he wouldn’t get too comfortable thinking he was
King Shit or something, who could drop by whenever he felt like
getting high or hanging with the low-lying fruit or whatever it was
that drew him in.
I will take a minute here to talk about Stan, because after what
happened I think he deserves his dues, especially since the local
media turned the whole thing into a two-minute community
freak-of-the-week gig, aired in between cheesy car commercials at
the end of the six o’clock news. The slick reporter with his great
hair and white teeth practically forgot Stan altogether, clamoring
to turn me into something I’m not. That definitely wasn’t cool,
but to him I was the kicker, the twist, the hype, but I’m telling
you, Stan was the real deal.
He was one of those rare kids who could move in pretty much
any crowd, a regular teenage chameleon who in theory everyone
should have hated. But really, the only person I can even think of
who wasn’t big on Stan was Fang, which was weird seeing how
Delaney wasn’t all that picky when it came to friends. I mean, I’d
been his best one for, like, ten years, which is a pretty good indicator
of just how low his standards were. But whenever Stan was
around, Fang was even quieter than usual, slung way back, arms
folded across his chest, looking all pouty and unimpressed. Still,
we both knew Fang would rather gnaw off his own knob than get
into it, so if he had a problem with Stan he kept it to himself,
which was fine by me.
When I consider just the basement dwellers, I’d have to say
Stan was mostly my friend. We’d hooked up at school before he
6 Joanne Proulx
started showing up at Delaney’s or spending his lunch hours with
us stoners, cluttering up the school’s back parking lot, passing
around a spliff and doing sketchy tricks on his board to make us
laugh. I have to admit, he was funny as hell, which was probably
why so many kids liked him in the first place, although he was a
lot more than just another pothead clown.
I remember this one time after lunch, when Stan and I went to
class and Mr. Thorp, our math teacher with the huge head, sprang
this surprise quiz on us. I’d sat there trying to make sense of the
mess floating around on the page in front of me—you know,
trying not to laugh about how unimaginative it was that a six was
just a tipped-over nine or something equally brilliant—and I
glanced over and Stan’s like totally bent over the page, all intense
and concentrated. I mean, he was just flying. He must have
sharpened his pencil fifteen times during that test. Afterwards he
chatted it up with the brains in the corridor, a big grin on his
face. He ended up getting something like 95, only about 80 more
than me.
After school, Stan usually shot hoops with the jocks, all buffed
and shit, no shirt and his jeans just barely hanging on, boxers
poking out the top the way the chicks dig it. He was a great ball
player, but everyone knew he was just passing time, waiting for
the drama group to wrap up whatever piece o’ crap they were
practicing so he could walk Faith Taylor, as in the Faith Taylor,
home. Faith’s one of the beautiful people at Jefferson, and even
though she’s in drama, she’s also really cool, although I wouldn’t
have known it back then; back then I’d never been close enough
to even get a whiff of what she was all about.
ANTHEM OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET 7
But Stan had been going out with Faith since freshman year,
and from what I heard he’d definitely been on the inside. Man!
Like most guys at Jefferson, I would have given my right nut to get
anywhere with a girl like her, and fucking Stan was shagging her
on a regular basis and she was probably loving the whole thing. I
mean, they went out for like a year and a half, so you figure it out.
Anyway, not only was Stan dude enough to be with Faith, he
was also smart and funny and athletic, just an excellent person
from pretty much every angle, and unless you’re a total brick,
you’ve probably guessed that he died at 8:37 a.m., October 8,
2002, on his way to school. He was hit by a red van turning into
the parking lot of the 7-Eleven he was ripping by at the time. He
died of head injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. (Later
on, I overheard this kid at school whose dad is a cop telling some
of his friends that the people in the van were from Windsor,
Canada. They’d been tooling through Michigan, headed for New
York City, got off the turnpike for gas, got lost on their way back
to the highway and had headed into the 7-Eleven for directions. I
thought Stan would have appreciated this bit of information,
which proves he was right on. No one ever comes to butt-fuck
Stokum, especially in October.)
Now, this isn’t something I really like to rehash, but it’s
important and I have to lay it down once, so maybe people
might understand a little better what was going on, I mean really
going on, instead of buying the garbage they spewed on TV. The
morning Stan died started out pretty much the same as every other
day. I got up around seven-thirty, completely groggy from the
weed the night before, grabbed a shower and some cereal and was
8 Joanne Proulx
on my way to school when I got this really weird feeling. I kept
riding for a while, but I couldn’t shake the weirdness, so I skidded
out and picked up my skateboard. By that time the chatter of
wheels on rutted pavement had moved past my feet, crawled up
my legs, to settle in my belly. I actually went and leaned up against
a tree, but it didn’t help. The sun just kept getting brighter, and
everything but the tremble in my gut got quiet, until all I could
hear was playing on the inside—vibrations shifting and spinning,
growing into something big and beautiful, something built on
waves of sonic light. It was like feeling the bass moving through
you when your favorite song is cranked and the music is right
there inside you, threatening wonder, only it was so much cleaner
and purer and it only lasted for a second.
I wasn’t wearing a watch at the time, but it didn’t matter. I was
positive it was 8:37. I was positive Stan was dead. And I knew
what a good, solid guy he’d been, an incredible guy, and what a
loss it was that he was gone. I also knew that the life I’d lived until
that moment was as dead as my friend.
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. Luke’s death premonitions add an element of the supernatural in an otherwise realistic setting. How does the author make these premonitions feel real?

2. Despite not having a premonition about Astelle Jordon, the missing girl, Luke is certain she is dead. Why might he be pre-disposed to this “certainty”? Why do you think he refuses to touch Astelle’s sweatshirt when Mrs. Jordan comes to him for help?

3. Do you think Luke has a good relationship with his parents? Are their efforts at helping Luke effective or not?

4. Throughout the novel, music plays a major role, culminating in Luke’s belief in “the distilled hum of a hundred million other souls that plays somewhere just beyond our reach.” Discuss the way music connects Luke to the people around him and offers him a medium to both interpret and express the premonitions and their aftershocks.

5. Readers have expressed dismay with the fact that Luke has sex a second time with Astelle Jordan. When you consider this event in the context of the events proceeding Luke’s visit to Astelle’s, who do you think Luke is referencing at the end of chapter twenty-four, when he says, “I knew exactly what I was doing, and who I was doing it to”?

6. When Luke and Fang finally discuss the Gandy’s Rock climb, each claims to have been saved by the other. What was going on out at the rock? Who was in control of the moment? Why did Fang climb the rock? Were the boys’ actions heroic or simply reckless?

7. After the trip to Gandy’s Rock, Luke quite literally pins Faith in her car. “I kept my head on her leg and my fingers wrapped around her ankle. She started crying, man was she crying, and I could tell it wasn’t just about the frogs. And instead of feeling sorry, I felt a flicker of amazement that someone like me had been able to touch a girl like that. To hurt her. To make her weep.” Why does Faith’s crying amaze Luke? What is implied by the phrases “someone like me” and “a girl like that”?

8. After Luke’s encounter with the fundamentalists, he finally goes looking for Fang. The author has said that while writing this section, she was surprised by the unexpected appearance of Mrs. Delaney. Were you surprised by Mrs. Delaney’s sudden appearance? Was she what you expected? Why do you think she showed up at this point in the book?

9. Toward the end of the novel, when pondering Pastor Ted’s salvation efforts, Luke claims he was baptized in Fang’s shower. Why does he consider what happened to him in the shower a form of baptism?

10. When Luke finally makes it to Stan’s grave, he admits it took him a long time to understand that what he’d really lost when he lost Stan “was nothing more or nothing less than my holiest friend.” Initially, what did Luke think he’d lost when Stan died? What changed his opinion of his loss? Why does he refer to Stan as his “holiest” friend?

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