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 abbreviated excerpt only...

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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